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Xiang Zhou | Intergenerational Mobility, Marital Sorting, and Social Closure: Patterns and Trends in China

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Lecture

Mon, Dec 7, 2026

4:30 PM – 6 PM EST (GMT-5)

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Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Details

xiang. Flyer for Xiang Zhou vertical bar Intergenerational Mobility, Marital Sorting, and Social Closure: Patterns and Trends in China
Intergenerational social mobility and marital sorting by socioeconomic status have long served as key indicators of societal openness. Since China's economic reform, sharply rising inequality has coincided with declining social mobility, as children's socioeconomic status increasingly mirrors their parents', while marital sorting by education has intensified. Both trends point toward growing social closure, yet how they jointly shape the reproduction of inequality remains poorly understood. We introduce a family-level measure of social closure that nests intergenerational immobility and marital sorting as components. Applying it to Chinese survey data and comparing with the United States, we find that closure rose steadily across birth cohorts, especially among women, reaching US levels for the most recent cohort. Rising immobility and intensifying marital sorting contributed to comparable extents, and the increase in immobility was driven almost entirely by mothers' growing influence.

Where

Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Speakers

Xiang Zhou's profile photo

Xiang Zhou

Professor of Sociology

Harvard University

Xiang Zhou is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. His research broadly concerns inequality, education, causal inference, quantitative methods, and contemporary China. His work has appeared in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Political Economy, PNAS, among other peer-reviewed journals. He is co-author (with Geoffrey T. Wodtke) of Causal Mediation Analysis, published by Cambridge University Press in March 2026. Before coming to Harvard, Zhou worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University. He received a PhD in Sociology and Statistics from the University of Michigan in 2015.


Sponsors

Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China. No image description provided

Hosted By

Center on Contemporary China | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Center on Contemporary China (OWNER)