Dissertation Projects
Multidimensional Measure of Major-Occupation Mismatch (AJS R&R)
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Prior research has consistently found that college graduates working in occupations mismatched with their college majors experience a wage penalty. Yet, this literature has relied on a match-mismatch dichotomy to study the major-occupation relationship that provides limited insight on how they are mismatched and why it shapes labor market outcomes. In a co-authored work, I use the skill-profile framework to compare majors and occupations across 120 dimensions of skill and distinguish three previously conflated forms of mismatch: positive mismatch, where an occupation demands more skill than a major signals; negative mismatch, where it demands less; and profile mismatch, where it requires a different combination of skills altogether.
Applying this to the 2009–2022 American Community Survey, I find that positive mismatch carries a wage premium, while negative and profile mismatch both carry penalties. This approach not only has substantially greater explanatory power than conventional matched/mismatched classifications, but also provides a nuanced understanding of the labor market processes and stratification.
College Selectivity and Fertility in the Early Adulthood
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The literature's educational gradient in fertility compares degree-holders to non-holders, treating the college-educated as a uniform group — an assumption that's harder to sustain as institutions diversify. I ask whether fertility timing varies by institutional selectivity among women who hold the same four-year degree.
Using restricted Add Health data, I find women from the least selective institutions face roughly 2.6 times the risk of a first birth before age 30 compared to graduates of the most selective institutions, concentrated during the college years themselves rather than diverging career paths afterward — with no comparable gradient among men.
The Value of College Degree in the Marriage Market, 1960–2020
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Sociologists agree education is central to partner selection but have rarely measured how much it's worth on a scale comparable across time. Building on Xie and Dong (2021), I propose a counterfactual estimand: how much spousal income would someone give up to marry a college graduate rather than a high school graduate?
Applying it to Census and ACS data, I find the exchange value of a bachelor's degree rose sharply in the twenty-first century — from roughly $2,000 in 1980 to over $6,500 today, in 1990 dollars — driven largely by widening income inequality across education levels; holding inequality at its 1960 level, men's degrees retain their value while women's decline.