Florencia Torche

Trump’s presidency is a wealth transfer from the bottom to the top

In this GEL video, @cyberlyra.bsky.social talks about opting out of Big Tech - which included evading surveillance at Disney World, no easy feat: buttondown.com/creativegood...

my colleague @jenjennings.bsky.social explaining how school choice turns a public shortage of good schools in NYC into a private struggle, benefiting families with the time and resources to navigate the system: www.nytimes.com/2026/10/19/o...

NEW: Orestes P. Hastings, "Even More Unequal Childhoods: 45 Years of Widening Income Gaps in Parental Investments in the United States" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

Terrible news for higher education. This will effectively kill OPT, which is major incentive for international students. $70k fee university must pay. Seems like game over for OPT. Will go into effect after 30 day public comment and 60 day implementation delay.

Fun fact: in 2024 there were more Trump voters in Los Angeles and San Diego Counties than all of Nebraska, Alaska, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and most of Montana combined.

on the relevance of a precisely estimated null effect: www.nber.org/papers/w3587...

The fact this is was completely avoidable and preventable...what the fuck America. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

IU sociology is hiring! We have a wonderful department and exceptional graduate students. It's a great place to work. indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/34396

"Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved"... Weber's description of the iron cage fits the new AI-managed world pretty well

Now recruiting PhD applicants for Fall 2027 for our Policy, Place, Population Health, and Aging (P3HA) Training Program - an NIA-funded T32 program on how policies and places shape health, longevity, and wellbeing across the life course. Info: www.maxwell.syr.edu/academics/po...

Two extraordinary charts from today’s PISA test results: 1) School test scores continue to collapse internationally, underscoring how this is no longer a Covid effect but sustained decline. Those falls in reading and maths are equivalent to about two years of lost schooling.

📣📣📣Cornell Population Center is hiring for its next Rhodes Postdoctoral Fellow The fellowship is competitive and provides ample time for pursuing independent and collaborative research. Welcome applications from all scholars interested in population research. Please share widely!

New paper alert! Vital stats only capture individual births, not people’s reproductive career. For that, demographers use surveys that collect full fertility histories. But these fertility histories are less helpful if people don’t fully report all their births or report info inaccurately. 1/

Equality in the Nordics is mainly driven by collective bargaining, not tax and transfer or public goods spending

NEW: Manuel Schechtl, Florencia Torche, "Changing Opportunity: Rising Local Wealth Inequality and Growing Class Gaps in Income Mobility" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...

Can childhood exposure to rising local wealth inequality help to explain growing class gaps in income mobility? Short answer: Yes! New paper with @ftorche.bsky.social now out OA in @sociologicalsci.bsky.social here: sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13... #Demography #Sociology #EconSky

Something to feel hopeful today

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

Y'ALL I was reading up on the history of the Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition, which is already wild. Then I discovered that THIS is how young Evelyn became Mrs. Kitagawa (even before becoming Dr. Kitagawa).

Happy to be part of this mini-documentary on the pill with Claudia Goldin & Elaine Tyler May. It seems especially timely given certain groups seem hellbent on rolling back women's reproductive autonomy.

It's notable that Sen. Ossoff is pressing this attack in a tight re-election fight in a purple state. The rest of the party needs to pay attention.

A student-level event-study design across three states shows special education supports substantially boost achievement of students with disabilities, from Stephanie G. Coffey, Joshua Goodman, Amy Ellen Schwartz, Leanna Stiefel, Marcus A. Winters, and Yunee H. Yoon www.nber.org/papers/w34998

Williams, Martin J. “Causal Inference, Agency, and the Problem of Inherent Endogeneity,” 2025.

It’s not just that there is no requirement, but ASA prohibits any requirement. This is why I am no longer an ASA member and won’t serve on ASA journal editorial boards.

How far can you get in 60 minutes? European cities offer vastly larger areas reachable by public transit than US cities of comparable population size. Source: lconwell.github.io/lucasconwell...

New from me: Most Americans who aren’t having children don’t want to (and not because of the environment). To look at the overlapping reasons not to have children, I got the Pew data, constructed categories, and made a table of combinations. /1 familyinequality.wordpress.com/2026/03/13/m...

It is pretty remarkable how little the press is remarking on the Trump administration's constant, harping, scraping desire to specifically remake the press.

My weekly NIH update... The fiscal year 2026 curve still lies below the other curves but appears to be increasing at close to the normal pace. 1/4

New data on ICE arrests (2015–2025) show that as arrests surge, the share of arrested people with criminal convictions fall sharply, from Chloe N. East, Caitlin Patler, and Elizabeth Cox www.nber.org/papers/w34794

I ran a simple model with new public data then used 1 prompt to make ChatGPT guess what the model would produce. With 10 seconds of "thinking," it was very close. The implications of this are catastrophic. The American Sociological Association should do something about this but it doesn't care to /1

Happy to have contributed to this along w/ @karenguzzo.bsky.social @marthajbailey.bsky.social & Melissa Kearney. My favorite from Karen: “We spent decades shaming women 4 having kids under the wrong circumstances, 4 not having their ducks in a row. Now they are holding up their end of the bargain.”

Results show a marked relationship between increases in local wealth inequality and reduced mobility for children in the lower half of the income distribution.

⚠️ New WP ⚠️ with @ftorche.bsky.social: Can childhood exposure to local wealth inequality help explain growing class gaps in income mobility? Short answer: Yes! Read the full answer here: doi.org/10.31235/osf... #Demography #Sociology #EconSky

85% of babies in 2026 will be born in Asia and Africa.

New Post-Doc Opportunity: Princeton OPR is hiring postdocs in population studies. PhD in demography or related fields (sociology, economics, epi, etc.) welcome. Apply here: apply.interfolio.com/181246 Review begins 3/1/16. Please share!

The McLanahan Award is given in honor of Sara McLanahan, a remarkable scholar, mentor, and policy advisor. The award goes to a senior scholar for extraordinary contributions to the study of family change, the well-being of children and families, and related social policies.

Good morning epi methods community! Please consider applying for (and spreading the word about) this position here at Minnesota. It's a great place to be! (You can read the whole description and apply here: apply.interfolio.com/179313) #EpiSky

Did you publish a sociological book about families in 2024 or 2025? You should nominate it for the ASA Goode Book Award! I'm on the committee and looking forward to reading nominated books 🤓

finally, we're living through precedented times

“Severe Tornadoes & Infant Birth Weight”: In considering “environmental hazards as drivers of inequality & stratification,” @nickdemark.bsky.social et al. show how severe tornadoes led to ↓ in birth weight for the infants of Black mothers, esp. early in pregnancy. read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

The obscenely wealthy rarely earn much in taxable income, and our system is replete with ways for the mega-rich to avoid paying taxes. Yet we're still blaming immigrants for our economic woes - and that's exactly how the mega-rich want it. It's all misdirection so they can hoard wealth and power.

In “Consequences of Community Violence for Contraceptive Use & Provision in Mexico,” @signesvallfors.bsky.social @mlcaudillo.bsky.social & O. Torrisi find exposure to violence is associated with accelerated transition to first use, esp. for long-term exposure. read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...