Research

You can also find my articles on my Google Scholar profile.

Peer-reviewed publications

Zheng, Haowen, Anders Holm, Robert Andersen, and Kristian B. Karlson. “Is College Really ‘the’ Equalizer: New Evidence Addressing Unobserved Selection” Sociological Science [Forthcoming]

Click for Abstract: Influential research shows that college graduates achieve similar labor market outcomes regardless of socioeconomic origin, leading to the view that a college degree is a “great equalizer.” Still, other evidence suggests that family background continues to shape labor market outcomes long after graduation, implying that college’s equalizing effect may largely reflect the characteristics of those who pursue higher education. However, the role of unobserved selection into college has rarely been examined.

After formally illustrating how this unobserved selection can bias estimates of the college effect, we present new analyses that correct for this bias using an instrumental-variable approach on white male respondents in the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. The selection-corrected results suggest that intergenerational mobility is similar among college graduates and nongraduates. Although college yields substantial returns for all, these returns do not differ by family background. We conclude that for higher education to serve as a true equalizer, it must become both less selective and more accessible to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Zheng, Haowen, Siwei Cheng. 2025. “Social Rigidity Across and Within Generations: A Predictive Approach” Sociological Methods & Research, 54(4), 1683-1725 Online first

Click for Abstract: How well can individuals’ parental background and previous life experiences predict their mid-life socioeconomic status (SES) attainment?

This question is central to stratification research, as a strong power of earlier experiences in predicting later-life outcomes signals substantial intra- or intergenerational status persistence, or put simply, social rigidity. Running machine learning models on panel data to predict outcomes that include hourly wage, total income, family income, and occupational status, we find that a large number (around 4,000) of predictors commonly used in the stratification literature improves the prediction of one’s life chances in middle to late adulthood by about 10 percent to 50 percent, compared with a null model that uses a simple mean of the outcome variable. The level of predictability depends on the specific outcome being analyzed, with labor market indicators like wages and occupational prestige being more predictable than broader socioeconomic measures such as overall personal and family income. Grouping a comprehensive list of predictors into four unique sets that cover family background, childhood and adolescence development, early labor market experiences, and early adulthood family formation, we find that including income, employment status, and occupational characteristics at early career significantly improves models’ prediction accuracy for mid-life SES attainment. We also illustrate the application of the predictive models to examine heterogeneity in predictability by race and gender and identify important variables through this data-driven exercise.

Zheng, Haowen, Kim A. Weeden. 2023. “How Gender Segregation in Higher Education Contributes to Gender Segregation in the U.S. Labor Market” Demography, 60(3), 761-784. Open access link

Click for Abstract: What is the relationship between gender segregation in higher education and gender segregation in the labor market?

Using Fossett's (2017) difference-of-means method for calculating segregation indices and data from the American Community Survey, we show that approximately 36% of occupational segregation among college-educated workers is associated with gender segregation across 173 fields of study, and roughly 64% reflects gender segregation within fields. A decomposition analysis shows that fields contribute to occupational segregation mainly through endowment effects (men's and women's uneven distribution across fields) than through the coefficient effects (gender differences in the likelihood of entering a male-dominated occupation from the same field). Endowment effects are highest in fields strongly linked to the labor market, suggesting that educational segregation among fields in which graduates tend to enter a limited set of occupations is particularly consequential for occupational segregation. Within-field occupational segregation is higher among heavily male-dominated fields than other fields, but it does not vary systematically by fields' STEM status or field–occupation linkage strength. Assuming the relationship between field segregation and occupational segregation is at least partly causal, these results imply that integrating higher education (e.g., by increasing women's representation in STEM majors) will reduce but not eliminate gender segregation in labor markets.

Zheng, Haowen. 2020. “The Only-child Premium and Moderation by Social Origin: Educational Stratification in Post-reform China.” Chinese Journal of Sociology, 6(3): 384-409 Open access link

Click for Abstract: The One Child Policy initiated in the late 1970s created a birth cohort with an unusually high proportion of only children. This paper examines the relationship between being the only child in the family and educational attainment, as well as its potential variations by social origin.

Drawing my sample from the China Family Panel Studies, I compare two birth cohorts born before and after the birth-control policy. Results show that in the younger cohort, being the only child in the family produces a premium in educational outcomes, including years of completed schooling and odds of progressing through critical grade transitions. In addition, I observe a pattern that the only-child premium tends to be larger for people with higher social origins in competitive grade transitions. * Master's Award for Academic Achievement in the Social Sciences, New York University

Working papers

Zheng, Haowen. (Paper on life course, family migration, and gender; under journal review)

ASA Sociology of Population Student Paper Award Honorable Mention
Kerckhoff Award (RC28)
Robin M. Williams, Jr. Best Paper Award (Cornell Sociology)

Zheng, Haowen. “Occupational Restructuring and the Decline of Internal Migration by College Status, 1980-2019”

Zheng, Haowen. “How Demographic Changes Drive Internal Migration Decline Among Heterosexual Couples: A Cohort-Based Approach”

Zheng, Haowen, Yongxin Shang, Adriana Reyes. “Uprooted for Opportunities Elsewhere: How Internal Migration Impacts Subjective Well-being”

Rich, Peter, Haowen Zheng and Christian Sprague. “Inequality in the Competition for Access to High-Achieving and High-Growth Schools Across Metropolitan Area Housing Markets”