Tom VanHeuvelen

Very excited about forthcoming @sfjournal.bsky.social with Jessie Himmelstern

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

How has job insecurity changed over the past 1/2ish century?

A Similarity Index for All Occupations Occupations are a critical theoretical concept in the social sciences, but they are difficult to operationalize and measure consistently, posing chall…

interesting paper on similarity of occupations www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Thanks! Hope all's well at Cornell.

Hope you find this useful.

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

We turn to the CPS monthly panel data because typical measures, like the January job tenure supplement, is increasingly missing folks who are bouncing in and out of work. So an important selection effect over time (Jessie deserves tons of credit for identifying this issue).

Two big things going on. Today, relatively few people are experiencing any insecurity. But those who are, are experiencing unusually intense insecurity.

So has insecurity gone up or down over time? Yes.

Weirdly enough, long-term trends in insecurity remain a bit of an open question. We use month-to-month CPS panel data to assess a fairly extreme version of job insecurity. People transitioning across work / non-work. And the frequency of these transitions.

Very excited about forthcoming @sfjournal.bsky.social with Jessie Himmelstern

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

How has job insecurity changed over the past 1/2ish century?

Alright alright alright post-Thanksgiving full November #polisky eJobs update (11/1-11/30):

November 2024: 99 total positions (50 open to assistant TT)

November 2025: 69 total positions (22 open to assistant TT)

Check out our new paper (+ the accompanying web viz)!

The Rise of Stratification Research in Sociology, Economics, and Political Science How social stratification became increasingly studied in sister fields of sociology

The rise of stratification research in sociology, economics, and political science. My new blog. With a conclusion that European universities should rather sponsor inequality centers than to dismantle them. @eui-eu.bsky.social @eui-sps.bsky.social hermwerf.substack.com/p/the-rise-o...

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...

“Potential” and the Gender Promotion Gap (Forthcoming Article) - We show that subjective assessments of employee “potential” contribute to gender gaps in promotion and pay. Using data on 29,809 management-track employees from a large retail ...

Forthcoming in the AER: "“Potential” and the Gender Promotion Gap" by Alan Benson, Danielle Li, and Kelly Shue. www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=...

I think it’s fair to say that “field of study” becomes increasingly relevant to understand social and political patterns. Here a blog I wrote about the revival of my PhD work in political science, with a proper replication by @liesbethooghe.bsky.social et al. hermwerf.substack.com/p/field-of-s...

I tend to find "current sentiment" to be a little more helpful than "consumer expectations." The latter tends to have massive partisan swings. Current Sentiment looks ... really bad.

Expectations about as low as the mid 1970s and early 1980s.

Record low consumer sentiment, according to the Survey of Consumers at the University of Michigan

Inequality Readers. Generally, My Best Guess IBE, in y.

Interesting discussion on causality by @tvanheuvelen.bsky.social including our paper joint necessity of external, internal and construct validity:

substack.com/@asocial/not...

Will do!

I don’t buy Kenworthy’s book hook line and sinker, but it is leading me to seriously consider dropping literally everything else for the next decade to figure out whether / how inequality matters.

New blog post

asocial.substack.com/p/inequality...

An interesting swing at the question, "why does inequality matter," by a philosopher and political scientist.

Can't reply to this, for some reason:

www.amazon.com/Jackpot-Supe...

Jackpot kind of sets up the "big payoff" nature of the modern hyper rich. Then dwells on consequences.

global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Kenworthy's new book is a big challenge to fundamental empirics of "inequality matters"

This report makes sense. But just imagine if they had published 8 reports, each with a single bullet point! They would have been so much more productive!

🎓 New paper accepted today, on the intergenerational educational mobility among immigrants in Denmark!

At first glance, immigrants seem more mobile than natives – but this is largely a data illusion. Poor register data quality drives the pattern.

w/ @rlandersoe.bsky.social

osf.io/preprints/so...

I really need to figure out how to become the Culvers distinguished chair of butter burgers and sociology. Why should business schools have all the fun, absurd named chairs

Should I send them a letter? Start dropping hints in the drive thru? This is my last remaining career goal.

At the blog I wrote about a few interesting new inequality studies:

* Authoritarianism is bad for global inequality measurement
* Aging is bad for subjective wellbeing
* Inequality might be bad for deaths of despair, but we need better studies

asocial.substack.com/p/inequality...

At the blog I wrote about a few interesting new inequality studies:

* Authoritarianism is bad for global inequality measurement
* Aging is bad for subjective wellbeing
* Inequality might be bad for deaths of despair, but we need better studies

asocial.substack.com/p/inequality...

Well, that is _super_ interesting. Great work, yet again!

Growing up Different(ly than Last Time We Asked): Social Status and Changing Reports of Childhood Income Rank - Social Indicators Research How we remember our past can be shaped by the realities of our present. This study examines how changes to present circumstances influence retrospective reports of family income rank at age 16. While retrospective survey data can be used to assess the long-term effects of childhood conditions, present-day circumstances may “anchor” memories, causing shifts in how individuals recall and report past experiences. Using panel data from the 2006–2014 General Social Surveys (8,602 observations from 2,883 individuals in the United States), we analyze how changes in objective and subjective indicators of current social status—income, financial satisfaction, and perceived income relative to others—are associated with changes in reports of childhood income rank, and how this varies by sex and race/ethnicity. Fixed-effects models reveal no significant association between changes in income and in childhood income rank. However, changes in subjective measures of social status show contrasting effects, as increases in current financial satisfaction are associated with decreases in childhood income rank, but increases in current perceived relative income are associated with increases in childhood income rank. We argue these opposing effects follow from theories of anchoring in recall bias. We further find these effects are stronger among males but are consistent across racial/ethnic groups. This demographic heterogeneity suggests that recall bias is not evenly distributed across the population and has important implications for how different groups perceive their own pasts. Our findings further highlight the malleability of retrospective perceptions and their sensitivity to current social conditions, offering methodological insights into survey reliability and recall bias.

The GSS asked the same people about their childhood income rank three different times. 56% changed their answer, even though what was trying to be measured couldn’t change! We dig into this in a new article at @socialindicators.bsky.social. 



doi.org/10.1007/s112...

🧵👇 (1/5)

Inequality Readers. Generally, My Best Guess IBE, in y.

At the blog, I wrote about two very interesting recent methods articles - Inference to the Best Explanation and External/Construct Validity.

Very thoughtful pushback against the ascendancy of the credibility revolution.

asocial.substack.com/p/inequality...

Hope you enjoy!

The Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management has announced that Zach Parolin @zparolin.bsky.social has won the David Kershaw Award.

www.appam.org/zachary-paro...

Enthusiastic congratulations to my good friend and occasional collaborator Zach!