It seems we are now entering a new phase of the rise of inequality in the US. It's not just wealth and billionaires — it's a broader acceleration. Here's who benefited from economic growth in 2025, according to the latest estimates available on realtimeinequality.org

What can we learn from automating an entire quantitative social science paper, from prompt to finished product? Thread about ongoing work with @natewilmers.bsky.social 1/12 Paper: osf.io/preprints/so...

Join us in Vienna to discuss inequality, economic mobility & labor markets! With @franziskadbacher.bsky.social and @izmartinez86.bsky.social I'm stoked to announce this workshop, keynotes by @emilynix100.bsky.social and @natewilmers.bsky.social. Nov 19-20, submit by June 30: www.wu.ac.at/ineq/ws26

Others claim that cities have the mysterious virtue of enhancing workers’ productivity. In this Nature Cities paper, our COIN team offers a simpler explanation. These cities are 'financial cities', where top earnings are inflated by rents in the financial labor market www.nature.com/articles/s44...

Using our data from wid.world, @lemonde.fr shows where members of the Lecornu government sit in France’s income and wealth distribution. Almost all are in the top 10% for income and wealth, a reminder of how political representation maps onto inequality. ⬇️ www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeur...

What drives the growth of private wealth? Has inequality increased? How does tax policy shape wealth across generations? Now published in Nature-Scientific Data: the data descriptor of the GC Wealth Project Data Warehouse by @stone-lis.bsky.social & Roma Tre University www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Knife crime! Pronouns! Meat bans! Some political issues lead to "hotter", more emotional and polarizing debates than others. We show how these "trigger points" reveal a contested structure of moral expectations and how they get weaponized by polarization entrepreneurs. OA @bjsociology.bsky.social 🧵

Why do Public Debates Escalate? Trigger Points and the Moral Dynamics of “Hot Politics”

Escalating, emotionally charged, and moralized forms of controversy are a central feature of contemporary politics. Our study develops a framework for understanding how political debates between ordi...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

The first paper of my dissertation is published now in @sociologyjnl.bsky.social! Press coverage of the richest Germans is rare but focused on a minority of highly visible individuals and varies along the historical origins of fortunes. doi.org/10.1177/00380385261428292

One of my favorite PhD thesis chapters is now published in @pnas.org Using cohort mortality data from 12 countries, I find no evidence that the rate of aging has slowed down. Longevity gains seem more consistent with a later onset of aging. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

My latest article is online now at American Sociological Review: “Kinship Interlocks.” It’s about how some elite families manage to stay rich and powerful for many generations while others don’t. 🧵 (1/16)

Kinship Interlocks: How the Intimate Exchange of Wealth, Status, and Power Generates Upper-Class Persistence - Shay O’Brien, 2026

How do some families manage to entrench themselves in the upper class for many generations while others do not? Bringing together economic sociology, political ...

journals.sagepub.com

🔍 How does economic inequality impact beliefs in meritocracy? Using comprehensive survey data from 39 advanced capitalist democracies over more than three decades, Markus Gangl & I examine how rising economic inequality has been shaping citizens' belief in meritocracy. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag016

The paradox of inequality that isn’t: rising economic inequality depresses and polarizes citizens’ belief in meritocracy

Abstract. This study examines how rising income inequality has been impacting individuals’ belief in merit-based success, using three decades of survey dat

doi.org

New paper out looking at financial assets and cardiometabolic risk among women and men in the AddHealth data: authors.elsevier.com/c/1mgBn_6KUS...

🧵 New paper out! Married couples have long been wealthier, on average, than cohabiting couples. But does this still hold as unmarried cohabitation becomes increasingly common? Find out in my latest paper in @bjsociology.bsky.social available in #OA: doi.org/10.1111/1468...

Marriage, Wealth, and the Spread of Cohabitation in Canada

Research demonstrates a robust link between marriage and wealth. Wealth facilitates marriage, which then fosters wealth accumulation, resulting in significant net worth disparities between married an...

doi.org

➡️ La durée des mandats des élites économiques suisses a été divisée par deux depuis le début du XXe siècle. En 2020, elle n’était plus que de sept à huit ans, contre env. 15 ans vers 1900. 👉 Böhme, E. D. & Bühlmann, F. www.socialchangeswitzerland.ch Données : OBELIS @obelitessuisses.bsky.social

Excited to share a new #OA study with @dariatisch.bsky.social and @schechtlm.bsky.social🎉We show that while most people prefer equal inheritance, wealthy individuals are more willing to support unequal transfers when they help preserve wealth across generations ➡️ academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

For a change, something we made ourselves: Together with my colleagues Tobias Roth, Andreas Horr, and @nataliebackes.bsky.social, we examined ethnic rent penalties. Do migrants pay higher rents for comparable housing than natives with similar characteristics? direct.mit.edu/euso/article...

Migrant rent penalties in the German housing market

Abstract. We investigate whether migrants pay higher rents for comparable housing than natives with similar characteristics using nationally representative data from the 2018 German Microcensus. The d...

direct.mit.edu

🚨 Thrilled to share my new paper with @yueqiansoc.bsky.social just out in @europeansocreview.bsky.social Bringing economic & family sociology into the digital era, we examine how online banking shapes who holds the purse strings among UK couples: doi.org/10.1093/esr/... @sriucl.bsky.social

Empowerment and individualization: online banking and household financial organization

Abstract. Bringing economic and family sociology into the digital era, this study examines and highlights the transformative potential of online banking in

doi.org

"Behind Closed Doors: Intra-Couple Pension and Wealth Gaps in Germany and Beyond" 🚪👩‍🦳👴 @lisdata.bsky.social / @liser.lu policy brief by @nicolekapelle.bsky.social and me out now! Read more here 👉 www.lisdatacenter.org/newsletter/n...

Studying whether low-economic-mobility neighborhoods can be transformed into high-mobility areas through the HOPE VI program, which invested billions to distressed public housing developments, from Chetty, Diamond, Foster, @lkatz42.bsky.social, Porter, Staiger, and Tach www.nber.org/papers/w34720

My new article, now online @sfjournal.bsky.social, examines trends in Black-White inequality by gender in earnings losses among displaced workers. Lost earnings premia, disadvantageous re-sorting, and statistical discrimination play distinct roles in shaping inequality. doi.org/10.1093/sf/s...

The fine journalists over at @volkskrant.nl have turned my data viz on billionaire migration into an excellent article on the tendency of billionaires to stay put: "Billionaires are homebodies: Where do the world's richest people live?" by Pepijn de Lange, graphics by Stefan Pullen

Miljardairs zijn honkvast. Waar wonen de allerrijksten der aarde?

Ze zijn deze week weer samen in Davos, veel rijken der aarde. Maar waar wonen miljardairs eigenlijk? En waar komen ze oorspronkelijk vandaan?

volkskrant.nl

New in Socio-Economic Review: Cohabitation & wealth in France and Germany. 📈 Cohabitation boosts wealth for both women and men; France’s Pacs adds an extra premium. ⚖️ Regulation > norms in explaining these wealth patterns. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/... @nicolekapelle.bsky.social #SER

🚨New working paper 🚨 – Saving Rate Heterogeneity across the Wealth Distribution in the United States Using PSID data (2001–2021), I provide mobility-consistent estimates of saving rates across the U.S. wealth distribution.

I’m hiring a postdoc! Flexible in terms of details, but I’m looking for someone to collaborate with on research about labor market inequality. I’ll review applications as they come in and the posting just went up here: apply.interfolio.com/178873

Study after study shows campaign ads barely move the needle. So where does money’s real power come from? I ranked the five ways money corrupts politics—from least to most corrosive. What I’ve learned from 15 years of tracking political money:

Money Doesn't Buy Elections. It Does Something Worse.

Campaign ads barely move the needle. The real influence is hiding in plain sight.

open.substack.com

ASA member Cristobal Young (Cornell University) says data show that the rich generally stay put, countering warnings that millionaires would flee NYC if Mamdani were elected. @us.theconversation.com

New York’s wealthy warn of a tax exodus after Mamdani’s win – but the data says otherwise

Research on millionaire migration reveals that social and professional ties matter far more than marginal tax rates.

bit.ly

Proud to share the publication of my first paper, co-authored with Silvio Candido, in @actasociologica.bsky.social! “Entrenched and unequal at the top: Brazilian capitalism and the social space of its corporate elite” is now out — hope you enjoy the read! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

journals.sagepub.com

"We find a highly connected network core of ∼275 directors...We find a large political premium for directors in very large companies." This month in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social

Sociological Science@sociologicalsci.bsky.social · 9mo ago

NEW: Lasse Folke Henriksen, Jacob Aagard Lunding, Christoph Houman Ellersgaard, Anton Grau Larsen, "The Hardcore Brokers: Core-Periphery Structure and Political Representation in Denmark’s Corporate Elite Network" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v12...

New working paper up on SocArxiv! osf.io/preprints/so.... I use the 1940 Census and linked mortality records in combination with an IV-design to study the causal effects of racial segregation on longevity. I show that segregation reduces both Black and White longevity.

New from me: An interactive data visualization showing billionaire migration: paths from birthplace to most recent residence for > 3,100 of the world’s richest individuals. Most importantly, fun to play around with; also, useful for thinking about q's re: elites and comparative wealth ineq. 1/5

Billionaire Migration: An Interactive Map

An interactive map of city-level migration flows for 3,106 billionaires from birth to most recent residence.

wesleystubenbord.com