My research and teaching interests include: the measurement of race and ethnicity, comparative racial formation, inequality and mobility, health disparities, immigration, social demography, social psychology and research methods.
Featured Research
We show that racial perceptions are fluid; how individuals perceive their own race and how they are perceived by others depends in part on their social position. Using longitudinal data from a representative sample of Americans, we find that individuals who are unemployed, incarcerated, or impoverished are more likely to be seen and identify as black and less likely to be seen and identify as white, regardless of how they were classified or identified previously. This is consistent with the view that race is not a fixed individual attribute, but rather a changeable marker of status.
See coverage of this study in: USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, among others.
Read the University of Oregon press release, and hear a conversation with Andrew Penner about this research on KCBS San Francisco.
Also covered by the Dutch popular-scientific website Kennislink, and by news services in the Netherlands, the UK and Brazil (Globo.com and Veja).
Other Recent Papers
Social constructivist theories of race suggest no two measures of race will
capture the same information, but the degree of "error" this creates
for quantitative research on inequality is unclear. Using unique data
from the General Social Survey, I find observed and self-reported
measures of race yield substantively different results when used to
explain income inequality in the United States. This occurs because
inconsistent racial classification is correlated with other respondent
characteristics such as immigrant generation, educational attainment
and age.
Dissertation
(Re)Modeling Race: Incorporating Racial Theory into Survey Research on Inequality
Over the past decade, debates have raged inside and outside the American academy about whether race should be included in survey research and governmental data gathering. The consensus position - that collecting racial data is necessary in order to monitor racial inequality - is admirable but fails to address the substantial gap between social science theory about race and actual research practice. While racial theory stresses complexity, contingency and a dynamic relationship between race and inequality, standard survey research practice continues to use a single, self-reported measure of race, as if it were a question to which there is only one "correct" answer. (read more ...)
Selected Conference Presentations (Please do not quote or cite manuscripts without permission)
presented at the 2006 Population Association of American Annual Meeting, March 30, Los Angeles