Patrick Präg

Achievements unlocked

Immigrants often arrive with better health than natives of their host country, a phenomenon known as the ‘healthy immigrant effect.’ This advantage diminishes over time, one reason being unequal healthcare access. Our study examines whether communication barriers contribute to these inequalities in a healthcare system that rarely accommodates an increasingly diverse and multilingual population. We expect that limited French proficiency restricts equitable access to care. Using the Trajectoires et Origines 2 survey conducted in 2019 in France among over 27,000 individuals---oversampling immigrant-origin populations---we investigate how language shapes healthcare use. France provides a relevant case, as immigrants come from diverse origins, including former colonies where French is an official language, generating substantial variation in proficiency. Findings show significant language-related disparities in medical visits, except for generalist practitioners. To address possible endogeneity bias in the relationship between language and healthcare uptake, we construct an instrument combining age at arrival in France and linguistic distance between French and the mother tongue. This method reveals a significant language effect only for visits to psychologists or psychiatrists. Theoretically, we propose a quantitative strategy to assess language barriers’ effects on immigrants’ healthcare access. Practically, we highlight the need for linguistically inclusive health services.

NEW PREPRINT by CREST Sociology's Julia Nicolas: "Language Barriers and Healthcare Uptake. Causal Evidence From Immigrants in France"

AVAILABLE at @socarxiv.bsky.social: doi.org/10.31235/osf...

note that this paper has no identification strategy itself

Der Genesung förderlich:

Austerity as reproductive injustice: did local government spending cuts unequally impact births? Abstract. Large local government spending cuts in England, spanning over a decade of austerity policies, have severely restricted the universal services an

Our new paper: Austerity as reproductive injustice: did local government spending cuts unequally impact births? led by Laura Sochas is out now OA in @sfjournal.bsky.social

Come work with me! Feel free to contact me via email, if you have questions : )

The image includes a mock up for the book "Mapping Texts: Computational Text Analysis for the Social Sciences" with a text box at the top saying "Second edition in the works!" and another text "With 100% more Al*." But this is not referring to artificial intelligence, but rather to an artist that is halfway to an EGOT: Weird "Al" Yankovic. An image of Homer Simpson is on the phone, presumably hearing about this new edition, and is so excited he exclaims "Whoo-hoo!" with a triumphant fist pump.

Marshall Taylor and I just signed a contract to write the 2nd edition of "Mapping Texts" (www.textmapping.com) Inter alia, we'll include a couple more chapters on "generative" language tech*

If you, or someone you know, has used such tech in social scientific investigation, let us know!

Name assimilation increases immigrants' earnings A LOT.

osf.io/preprints/so...

A thread of directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) that look like record covers... because that's EXACTLY what the world needs

1. Huey Lewis and the News: link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...

Net migration to UK drops 69% year on year, ONS figures show Figure of 204,000 in 12 months to June 2025 is lowest since 2021, statistics body says

Net migration down 69% YoY. Do we think this will dent Reform's poll numbers at all? www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

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

Front cover of The Division of Rationalized Labor. The cover includes four pictures: pen and paper, microscope, factory tower, police badge. Modern-looking yellow lines and graphs are superimposed.

My new book, The Division of Rationalized Labor, is now shipping! A brief summary of the argument to follow…

Why did I visit the Facebook pages of 5500 German grocery stores on a grey lockdown day ca. 2021?

You can now find out in AJS.

Our work on ethnoreligious infrastructures is finally online in the ominous Volume 0:

www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

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 🧵

I heard it's organised by some really dedicated people, who got a location overlooking zürich with a lovely terrace... should be nice in may

Visas are a key tool for states to regulate incoming mobility from abroad, which can have ramifications for the establishment and perpetuation of global inequalities. In this article, we systematically analyze visa appointment wait times in German embassies and consulates worldwide. Using computational methods, we collect—and publish—fine-grained longitudinal data on the closest available appointment dates for various visa types, covering a total of 16,182 visa appointment requests. Our analysis reveals strong and systematic variance: the poorer the country a diplomatic mission is based in, the longer the wait time and the lower the chances of finding an available appointment (which ranges from almost 0 to 100 percent). We also argue that Germany’s system is quite opaque compared to other established immigration countries such as the U.S. These core findings raise important questions in light of current debates about global justice, legal pathways to migration, and efforts to attract foreign talent.

Graph that shows that 44.1 percent of requests did not lead to an appointment that could be selected. For the 55.9 percent where an appointment was available the distribution of wait times follows a steep curve with short wait times in many cases and a long tail of few cases with very long wait times of up to 98 days.

The average wait times and chances to find an appointment varied a lot between Germany's diplomatic missions. The latter range from almost 0 to 100 percent.

This variance is not random. Rather, economic wellbeing (GDP per capita) is a key predictor of wait times and chances of finding an appointment. The poorer the country a German embassy/consulate is based in, the longer the wait time and the lower the chances of finding an appointment.

New #openaccess study

We made >16,000 visa appointment requests at German embassies and consulates worldwide

Key finding: The poorer the country, the longer the wait time and the lower the chance to get an appointment.

"A time panelty for the Global South?"
shorturl.at/ZiAFb

deleuze uns von dem bösen

German academia

Oops archive.is/M2wK8

Miles "Bad Boy" Hewstone

archive.is/M2wK8g

Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands? The withering performance and advantage of their children Abstract. Extensive research has examined the effect of educational expansion in one cohort on educational inequality and occupational returns in that same

New article in @sfjournal.bsky.social with @mvaldes1989.bsky.social and I. Lievore on the effect of edu expansion among parents on children's achievement

Do university-educated families lose their edge as education expands among parents?

Short answer: yes

1/2

academic.oup.com/sf/advance-a...

Screenshot from the Epstein Document Search which reads: House_Oversight_029401 From: Donald Rubin Sent: 1/22/2017 7:31:32 PM To: jeffrey E. [jeeyacation@gmail.com] Subject: Republican health care experts dismiss Donald Trump's ideas Importance: High https://www.statnews.com/20 1 6/03/04/trump -repub cans-health-care/? s camp aign=trendmd Jeffrey, This cannot be true, can it? This guy must be as dumb about this stuff as a tampon laced with arsenic!! HELP! Great meeting yesterday — really enjoyed it. And happy birthday again, Don Donald B. Rubin John L. Loeb Professor of Statistics Department of Statistics, Harvard University 1 Oxford Street Cambridge MA 02138 HOUSE OVERSIGHT 029401

In between things I've been checking in on the emails that mention "university" and uhh did we all know about this connection?

New paper with @jordantkemp.bsky.social and Luis Bettencourt is now on arXiv: “Spatial Selection and the Multiscale Dynamics of Urban Change”. We use the Price equation and Chicago data to show how fine-scale spatial sorting shapes macro growth trends. Read it here: arxiv.org/pdf/2511.06165

Embryo selection based on polygenic prediction risks reinforcing social inequality The rise of companies offering embryo selection based on genetic testing has triggered heated debate about ethical acceptability, as well as the accuracy and scientific validity of these techniques. W...

There’s a new kid in town!

Companies are now selling IVF and embryo selection based on genetic testing for traits related to health and even intelligence.

We outline methodological and ethical concerns, and warn against risks for social inequality.

With the fantastic @gaiaghirardi.bsky.social

Estimation and mapping of the missing heritability of human phenotypes - Nature WGS data were used from 347,630 individuals with European ancestry in the UK Biobank to obtain high-precision estimates of coding and non-coding rare variant heritability for 34 co...

First time on Bsky and first big announcement!

I am excited to announce that our new study explaining the missing heritability of many phenotypes using WGS data from ~347,000 UK Biobank participants has just been published in @Nature.

Our manuscript is here: www.nature.com/articles/s41....

📢 Call for Abstracts
Join us at the Family Diversity & Health Workshop June 29-30 2026 in Berlin!

We welcome submissions on intersections of health & family research, especially using register data. 🌏

🫶 No participation fees & hotel costs are covered.
📨 Send us your abstracts by Jan 31 2026

A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision.

A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year.

The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.

We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...

I'm facilitating a causal inference reading group next semester for Sociology PhD students. (I will also be learning!) If there are (1) pedagogical articles or (2) empirical examples in soc that you ❤️, will you share in the comments? [And please RT to help me crowd-source!]

This kind of announcement may help explain why so many people are using LLMs to flood preprints servers with papers about AI