Lingxin Hao (Ph.D., Sociology, 1990, University of Chicago) is Professor of Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University. Her areas of specialty include immigration, family and public policy, social inequality, sociology of education, and quantitative methods.  Her research tests hypotheses developed from sociological theories using advanced methodology and national longitudinal survey data.  

Research Agendas

1.  Immigration and Inequality in the United States

Since 1995, Dr. Hao has examined the relationship between immigration and a number of phenomena, including academic achievement, socio-emotional development, transition to adulthood, public assistance and private support for individuals and families, household income and wealth, intra-generational economic mobility, as well as health inequality.

Dr. Hao is currently investigating the impact of immigration on the distribution of specialty fields and salary inequality among college graduates.  The work includes the development of a classification scheme of specialty fields for formal education and occupation and inter-cohort and intra-cohort analysis using data from the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG 1993 and 2003).  The analysis estimates the impact of skilled immigration policies on salary inequality using quantile regression and quantile regression decomposition technique.

Dr. Hao’s future work will (1) look more deeply into the career trajectories of immigrant vs. native college graduates and investigate how this differential contributes to rising income inequality, utilizing the follow-ups of the NSCG samples; (2) conceptualize and analyze how immigration complicates racial/ethnic disparities in employment trajectories and earning profiles over the ages of young adulthood across cohorts born in 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, using the matched payroll tax data and the Survey of Income and Program Participation (the Gold Standard Files of the SIPP); and (3) conceptualize and analyze the relationship between immigration and the emerging labor market institution of contingent labor, taking advantage of the matched employer data and household survey data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD).

2.  Family and Public Policy in the United States

Since 1990 Dr. Hao has investigated the effects of welfare policy and private support from kin networks on single mothers’ education, employment, and fertility, children’s economic well-being including family income, family wealth, and childhood consumption, as well as children’s cognitive and socio-emotional development. 

A current project examines how public assistance and private support affected children’s income and housing well-being during the Great Recession (2007 - 2009) in comparison with the impacts of previous economic recessions and booms, using multiple panels of the SIPP.

An upcoming project will examine the effects of changing social policies, economic structure, and social and legal climates since the civil rights movement on the education, employment, and earning trajectories of men and women from ages 14-17 to ages 29-32 across three cohorts (born 1951-1954, 1962-1965, and 1980-1983).  These trajectories will also serve as precursors for prime-age socioeconomic and health outcomes.  This project will use data from three surveys of the National Longitudinal Surveys (NLS).

3.  Migration and Inequality in China

In 2010 Dr. Hao began formulating a new research agenda on migration and inequality in China, based on her first-hand fieldwork in villages in two migrant-sending provinces and at schools serving rural migrant children in a migrant-receiving city.  Since the 1980s, Chinese cities have seen an upsurge in the number of rural-to-urban migrants. At the same time, the institutionalized markers for urban vs. rural status (household registration status which is known as hukou) and the privileges and social services associated with an urban hukou remain rigid, creating an emerging disadvantaged social group of rural migrants and their children in cities.

Dr. Hao is currently examining the effects of China-specific social stratification factors on the complete educational trajectories of cohorts born 1944 to 1974 based on retrospective data from the Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS 2008).  Another current project examines whether hukou and other social stratification factors influence school engagement and academic efficacy of college students over the course of college education using the 2009-2011 Chinese Education Panel Survey of college students (CEPS).

A theoretical goal of this agenda is to test whether the Western theory about formal schooling as a major avenue of social inequality and mobility can be applied to Chinese society and in what way the Western theory can be refined and extended.  To this end, Dr. Hao is preparing a grant application seeking funding for a new data collection through a national longitudinal survey of junior high school students with a focus on urban schools serving rural migrant children.