David B Grusky
David B. Grusky is Edward Ames Edmonds Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences, Professor of Sociology, Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, Faculty Fellow at the Center for Population Health Sciences, Faculty Director of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, and coeditor of Pathways Magazine. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a corecipient of the 2004 Max Weber Award, the founder of the Cornell University Center for the Study of Inequality, and a former Presidential Young Investigator.
His recent books are Inequality in the 21st Century (with Jasmine Hill, 2017), Social Stratification (with Kate Weisshaar, 2014), Occupy the Future (with Douglas McAdam, Robert Reich, and Debra Satz, 2012), The New Gilded Age (with Tamar Kricheli-Katz, 2011), and The Great Recession (with Bruce Western and Chris Wimer, 2011).
David B. Grusky
Edward Ames Edmonds Prof. in H&S and Prof. of Sociology
Faculty Director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality
grusky@stanford.edu
CV
Research summary
His research examines changes in inequality, new ways to improve the country’s infrastructure for monitoring inequality, and new policies for reducing inequality. Here are some examples of research questions that he’s taken on:
- Building a 21st Century Data Infrastructure: Should the U.S. build a new type of data infrastructure that allows us to directly hear the voices of Americans as they react to ongoing crises and challenges? How can the administrative-data revolution be realized? Read more.
- Building an inclusive society in the 21st Century: If we were serious about building a more inclusive society, how might predistributive and redistributive reforms be combined and mixed? Read more.
- Markets in the 21st Century: Can the “commodification of opportunity” be reversed? The poor are now doubly disadvantaged: It’s not just that they have less money, but it’s also that money matters more for securing goods, services, and even opportunities. Read more.
- Interaction in the 21st Century: Are cities indeed the interactional “melting pots” that they’ve long been assumed to be? Or are they instead homophily-generating machines that sort people into highly segregated venues (e.g., shopping centers, restaurants)? Read more.
- Gender in the 21st Century: Why have long-term trends in gender inequality stalled out? Is this stalling out attributable, in part, to a growing reluctance among professional fathers to help their daughters? Read more.
- Social Mobility in the 21st Century: Is the takeoff in income inequality bringing about a historic reduction in opportunity and social mobility? Which types of mobility, if any, are in fact declining? Read more.
- Loss in the 21st Century: Why have conventional theories of stratification assumed that, as egalitarianism spreads, the losing groups will simply “go quietly” and accept their fate? Can we develop a new theory of stratification that takes widespread loss – and the populism it engenders – into account? Read more.
- Rent in the 21st Century: Why has income inequality increased so spectacularly in the last 40 years? Should the takeoff be attributed to market failure and the ever-increasing rent collected at the top of the income distribution? Read more.
- Classes in the 21st Century: Does contemporary inequality take on the big-class form that sociologists have long assumed? Or is most of the structure in contemporary labor markets found at the more detailed occupational level? Read more.