Alex Adames

image of a report cover, with a US flag in the background, and the text "The Political Disconnect: Working-Class and Low-Income People on What Politics Means to Them and How They Might be Mobilized”

Today I'm releasing probably the most important scholarly thing I've ever worked on - a report based on talking with 144 people about why they don't vote or only vote regularly, and on what needs to be done to build a democracy that can include everyone.
www.swarthmore.edu/u...
please share!

Deadline extended! Apply for the MCCFAD 2026 Summer Data Immersion Program by Monday, Feb. 16th!
#Umich #AcademicSky #PSID

myumi.ch/mRWPj

Austerity and Populism A large literature explains the rise of populist parties with the economic insecurities stemming from globalization and technological change. But despite the long-standing focus of the comparative and...

Very happy that our review article (with the @annualreviews.bsky.social) on „Austerity and Populism“ is now available as preprint: www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... - with @sattlersthomas.bsky.social

The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006* Abstract. We construct the first annual market rent and home sales price series for American cities over the 20th century using 2.7 million newspaper real

Recently accepted by #QJE, “The Price of Housing in the United States, 1890–2006,” by Lyons (@ronanlyons), Shertzer (@econhist-allday), Gray (@econhistoryorbust), and Agorastos: doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

Generative AI in Sociological Research: State of the Discipline Article: Generative AI in Sociological Research: State of the Discipline | Sociological Science | Posted January 20, 2026

Now out in Sociological Science

(How) do sociologists use GenAI for their research? Find out in our paper.

Written with @ajalvero.bsky.social @dustinstoltz.com and Marshall Taylor. Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey!!

@zoningwonk.bsky.social

Homeownership and political efficacy: how housing wealth shapes whether people feel heard Why do some citizens feel that political institutions are responsive to people like them, while others do not? Existing research highlights the role of education and income in shaping external poli...

Just out in @wepsocial.bsky.social: how housing wealth shapes whether people feel heard. Together with @madselk.bsky.social and @benansell.bsky.social, I looked at a neglected determinant of political efficacy: homeownership.

Read the #OA paper: doi.org/10.1080/0140...

Quick overview below (1/5)

The Contribution of College Majors to Gender and Racial Earnings Differences Founded in 1920, the NBER is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research and to disseminating research findings among academics, public policy makers, an...

New research by @imbernomics.bsky.social and colleagues using Texas data dives into different economic returns to college majors by race and gender. There are differences in the share of students going into high-paying fields, as well as earnings within those fields.

It's been a long time coming. After several years of revisions, my book Emotional Filipinos is coming out on April 15th. Please share and retweet! It would really mean a lot to me. Preorder sales available here: ugapress.org/978082037545...

🚨New paper in the International Journal of Sociology of Education where I analyse how growing up in single-parent families influences tertiary education attainment, which mechanisms explain this, their heterogeneity by parental SES and how it has changed over time.

👉🏽 doi.org/10.17583/ris...

"We find that minimum wages substantially reduce intergroup wage inequality at least up to the 20th wage percentile, with no evidence of adverse employment effects."

Is one of your goals for 2026 to write more? One question I get all the time is, "How do you make time to write?" So, here is my unsolicited writing advice for the new year:

This thread perfectly explains why AI has little value for qualitative research.

Yes, large language models can find patterns in qualitative data. But, they're trained on what we already know. So, they won't find anything surprising. And, surprise is qualitative research's primary value-add.

Community college enrollment has been declining since 2009/10. The optimal policy response to this depends on the root of this decline.

I'm thrilled @nber.org today released my working paper with Harvard PhD Joe Winkelmann titled:

"Labor Market Strength and Declining Community College Enrollment"

Segregation was not just a Southern phenomenon, it was a national issue. Explore the spatial history of racial segregation and discover how it connects to our communities today: greenbookproject.osu.edu #GreenBookProject #CommunityMap #EconSky

Clarifying the Diploma Divide: The Growing Importance of Higher Education for Political Identity: https://osf.io/cm2np

The Wage Standard by Arindrajit Dube: 9780593471418 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books “The go-to guy on minimum wage” (Nobel Laureate and New York Times bestselling author Paul Krugman) tackles one of the thorniest social issues of our times—income inequality—from...

Why did that happen, what does it tell us, and what can we do next?

That’s what my forthcoming book, The Wage Standard, is about: how rules, norms, and power in the labor market shape who shares in growth. Coming out March 31. Pre-order here:

www.thewagestandard.com

broke: teach the kids to code because it's employable

woke: teach the kids humanities because it's important to know about art, philosophy and other languages

bespoke: teach the kids to code because it's important to know about art, society, philosophy and other languages

this is why quantitative social scientists, the perfect balance of both worlds, should be in charge of everything.

Today, as ever, is a good day to encourage friends, colleagues and family to get off of Twitter

Have a favorite AEJ: Economic Policy paper from the past three years? Submit your nomination at the link below!
www.aeaweb.org/about-aea/ho...

Maybe it also helps if I make clear what I’m advocating for. When we do what we now call association studies, we should instead be clear that our goal is to generate evidence for a causal effect. We carefully state our estimand, are explicit about our causal assumptions and…

In light of record submission rates and a large volume of AI-generated slop, SocArXiv recently implemented a policy requiring ORCIDs linked in the OSF profile of submitting authors, and narrowing our focus to social science subjects. Today we are taking two more steps:
/1

I was going to say the same thing but about Houston. My prior is that Houston is capturing the large concentration of Black people in the mostly red Southern states. Would be interesting to see how names vary by race and partisanship or geography.

Curriculum shapes more than skills as taking STEM in high school boosts tech careers—but also shifts politics as boys grow more conservative and girls more progressive, from Robert Ainsworth, Rajeev H. Dehejia, Andrei Munteanu, Cristian Pop-Eleches, and Miguel Urquiola www.nber.org/papers/w34502

Gentle reminder that a correlation coefficient isn’t a particularly great way to quantify the effect of a dichotomous treatment. See also

www.the100.ci/2025/07/28/w...

Great paper with important implications for understanding life cycle inequalities. For example, one can see how strong memory of in labor market trajectories can lead to amplification of the experience of early career discrimination. Recommended!

The missing heritability question is now (mostly) answered Not with a bang but with a whimper

I wrote a little bit about the "missing heritability" question and several recent studies that have brought it to a close. A short 🧵

New evidence that twin estimates of heritability should be adjusted downward by about half

Urban's new affordability tracker highlighted by @usnews.com shows how earnings across the country haven’t kept pace with rising costs.