Haowen Zheng

Haowen Zheng

she/her/hers

PhD candidate in Sociology

Research

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

Gender inequality in labor market outcomes

Much of my research uses demographic methods to examine the sources of gender differences in occupations and pay, focusing on how these labor market outcomes are affected by dynamics within the family and the education system.

Zheng, Haowen. “Diverging Trajectories: Gender Inequality in the Life Course Effects of Family Migration among Married Couples” (Dissertation chapter, currently under review)

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.

The geography of stratification & spatial mobility

The second line of my research examines the geographic disparities in the distribution of occupational and educational opportunities. Chapters in my dissertation examine how evolving local labor market contexts interact with individual characteristics to shape spatial mobility rates and patterns over time. A related project studies how access to good public schools varies across metropolitan housing markets.

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” (Working paper)

Inter- & Intra-generational social mobility

My third line of research focuses on social mobility, i.e., how individuals move between socioeconomic positions across and within generations. My projects examine how various factors at different life stages, such as education, family background, and family structure, shape the inter- and intra-generational persistence of socioeconomic status.

Zheng, Haowen, Siwei Cheng, “Social Rigidity Across and Within Generations: A Predictive Approach” (R&R)

Zheng, Haowen, Kristian B. Karlson, Anders Holm, and Robert Andersen, “College is Not ‘the’ Equalizer: Some Evidence on the Role of Unobserved Heterogeneity” (Manuscript in preparation for journal submission)

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