I am a sociologist whose work is concerned with the implications of social inequality for the well-being of children and families, with a particular focus on education and health.
I am currently at the U.S. Census Bureau, where I am investigating connections between childhood disability, poverty, and education in the United States. In addition to this work, I am engaged in research on social inequality in comparative perspective as a Research Affiliate at the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
My work has been published in Social Forces, The China Quarterly, Comparative Education, and Identities and I have contributed to an edited volume on urbanization and social change in China. I earned a B.A. in Anthropology and Government from Dartmouth College in 2010 and received my Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019. My doctoral thesis examined how families at the top of the new social hierarchy in China are circumventing equalizing features of the highly competitive educational system to give their children an extra boost, and how this is contributing to diverging developmental contexts for children. Before graduate school, I worked as a high school teacher in Beijing, China.