Stephen Morgan

Cornell University
Professor of Sociology

Stephen L. Morgan is the Director of the Center for the Study of Inequality and Professor of Sociology at Cornell University. He has a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University, an M.Phil. in Comparative Social Research from Oxford University, and a B.A. in Sociology from Harvard University. He is also an Associate Director of the Cornell Population Center, and he was recently the co-PI on the proposal that resulted in the theme project, "Persistent Poverty and Upward Mobility," funded by Cornell's Institute for the Social Sciences. He serves on the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey as one of its inequality representatives and as a member of its long-range planning committee. He is also a member of the Socioeconomic Status Experts Panel, convened by the U.S. Department of Education to develop a new measure of socioeconomic status for federal reporting of the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) testing program, often referred to as The Nation's Report Card. His current areas of research include education, labor market inequality, and methodology. In addition to journal articles on these topics, he has published two books: On the Edge of Commitment: Educational Attainment and Race in the United States (Stanford University Press, 2005) and, co-written with Christopher Winship, Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research (Cambridge University Press, 2007). He is also the lead editor (along with David Grusky and Gary Fields) of the collection Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research from Sociology and Economics (Stanford University Press, 2006) and a co-editor (along with Arne Kalleberg, John Myles, and Rachel Rosenfeld) of Inequality: Structures, Dynamics and Mechanisms (Elsevier, 2004). His recent journal articles include pieces on network effects on educational achievement (Sociology of Education, 2009), the earnings losses of displaced workers (Social Science Research, 2010), educational attainment in northern Nigeria (African Studies Review, 2010), and models of college entry (Sociological Methods and Research, 2012). He has also written a chapter, with Christopher Winship, on context and variability in causal analysis, which is forthcoming in the Oxford Handbook of the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, edited by Harold Kincaid.

Working Group

Inequality: Measurement, Interpretation, and Policy (MIP)

Additional Information

Email: morgan@cornell.edu
Homepage: http://www.soc.cornell.edu/faculty/morgan/