Emma Zang, Ph.D. Department of Sociology Yale University, USA
Contact 493 College St, New Haven, CT 06511 emma.zang@yale.edu
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Biostatistics (secondary), and Global Affairs (Secondary) at Yale University. I received my PhD in Public Policy in 2019 and MA in Economics in 2017, both from Duke University. In 2021-22, I am a Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Health and Wellbeing in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.
My research interests lie at the intersection of health and aging, family demography, and inequality. My work aims to improve the understanding of 1) how early-life conditions affect later-life health outcomes; 2) social stratification and health; 3) causal spillover effects and gender inequality within the household. Because of my training in a public policy school by both sociologists and economists, my research is highly interdisciplinary. I enjoy and value collaborations across multiple disciplines, and have collaborated with colleagues who are sociologists, psychologists, economists, statisticians, mathematicians, epidemiologists, and clinicians.
I am also interested in developing and evaluating methods to model trajectories and life transitions in order to better understand how demographic and socioeconomic inequalities shape the health and well-being of individuals from life course perspectives. My ongoing work explores 1) Bayesian approaches to modeling group-based trajectories, incorporating Bayesian Model Averaging techniques; 2) Bayesian approaches to making multi-state life tables using high-dimensional survey data; 3) evaluations of Age-Period-Cohort (APC) models. My work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, Social Science & Medicine, Psychological Methods, Journal of Marriage and Family, International Journal of Epidemiology, and JAMA Internal Medicine. Multiple of my projects have been funded by the National Institute of Health.
My research has been covered by major media outlets in the United States, China, South Korea, India, and Singapore, such as CNN, NBC, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Harvard Business Review, ThePaper.cn (China), and the Straits Times (Singapore). I have been interviewed as an expert in China by BBC World News and as an expert on the gendered consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic by MoneyToday (South Korea).
If you would like to know more about me and my academic journey, Aimee Bronfeld at Princeton University wrote an amazing interview article.
