Lingxin Hao, Professor, Ph.D. (University of Chicago)  Immigration, social inequality, family, public policy, quantitative methodology.
Office Hours: Wednesday 3:00-5:00 - Room 509

My research is about the impact of contemporary immigration on the social mobility of immigrants and the native born and the resulting changes in social inequality in American society. In one project I examine whether the variations in immigrant composition across metropolitan areas shape neighborhood residential segregation and individual trajectories of job displacement and wage, income, and wealth mobility. I then examine the resulting full distributional features of inequality, building a linkage between mobility and inequality. In another project, I examine immigrant and native-born children's academic achievement and social emotional development, teasing out the impact of families, schools and neighborhoods.

In conjunction with this work, I am currently developing two new projects. One concerns immigration and health. The selectivity of immigrants from different countries, their unique migration and settlement dynamics, the drastic changes in their health environment upon arrival in the U.S., and their seemingly downward trend in health status offer research opportunities for providing answers to difficult questions in the health inequality literature. In addition, I am expanding my research on the impact of immigration on the host society to include the impact on the home society. Rising transnationalism combined with the steady flows of international migration have created strong connections between sending and receiving countries, generated forces important for both, and reshaped their positions in the global economic and political systems. My approach is to study the large aggregate capital flows of emigrants' investment in their home countries and their impact on the home and host societies.