Jennie E. Brand
Biography
Jennie E. Brand is Professor of Sociology and Professor (by courtesy) of Statistics and Data Science. She is Co-Director of the Center for Social Statistics (CSS). Prof. Brand is President of the Association of Population Centers (APC) https://www.popcenters.org/ and serves on the Board of Directors of the Population Association of America (PAA). She is a member of the Technical Review Committee for the National Longitudinal Surveys Program at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. She is Vice-President and incoming President of the International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28), previously serving on the Board of RC28. She was elected to the Sociological Research Association (SRA), an honor society for excellence in research, in 2019, received the ASA Methodology Leo Goodman Mid-Career Award in 2016, and received an honorable mention for the ASA Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility William Julius Wilson Mid-Career Award in 2014. She was also previously Chair of the Methodology Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA), Chair of the Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Section of ASA, served on the councils of the ASA Methodology, Sociology of Education, and Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility sections, a member of the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey (GSS), and Associate Editor of AAAS’s Science Advances. She was also previously Director of the California Center for Population Research. She serves on the editorial boards of Social Forces, Sociological Methodology, Sociological Methods and Research, Sociological Science, and Sociology Compass.
Degrees
Ph.D., University of Wisconsin – Madison
M.S., University of Wisconsin – Madison
B.A., University of California – San Diego
Research
Prof. Brand studies social stratification and inequality and its implications for various outcomes that indicate life chances. Her research agenda encompasses three main areas: (1) access to and the impact of higher education; (2) the socioeconomic and social-psychological consequences of disruptive events, such as job displacement; and (3) causal inference and the application and innovation of quantitative methods for panel data.
Publications
Brand, Jennie E. 2023. Overcoming the Odds. The Benefits of Completing College for Unlikely Graduates. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
Featured: Population Reference Bureau Research Brief https://www.prb.org/articles/college-degrees-yield-lifetime-benefits-for-the-unlikeliest-graduates/; Faculti https://faculti.net/overcoming-the-odds/;
Brand, Jennie E. and Yu Xie. 2023. “The Legacy of Robert D. Mare.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 88:100810.
Brand, Jennie E., Xiang Zhou, and Yu Xie. 2023. “Developments in Causal Inference and Machine Learning.” Annual Review of Sociology 48.
Lundberg, Ian, Jennie E. Brand, and Nanum Jeon. 2022. “Researcher Reasoning Meets Computational Capacity: Machine Learning for Social Science.” Social Science Research [50thAnniversary Series] 108.
Ahearn, Caitlin, Xiang Zhou, and Jennie E. Brand. 2022. “How, and for Whom, Does Higher Education Increase Voting?” Research in Higher Education.
Brand, Jennie E., Jiahui Xu, Bernard Koch, and Pablo Geraldo. 2021. “Uncovering Sociological Effect Heterogeneity using Tree-Based Machine Learning.” Sociological Methodology 51(2):189-223.
ASA Mathematical Sociology Outstanding Publication Award, 2024
Brand, Jennie E., Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, and Yu Xie. 2019. “Why Does Parental Divorce Lower Children’s Educational Attainment? A Causal Mediation Analysis.” Sociological Science 6:264-292.
Brand, Jennie E., Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, and Yu Xie. 2019. “Parental Divorce is Not Uniformly Disruptive to Children’s Educational Attainment.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(15):7266-7271.
Featured (selected): TIME Magazine; MarketWatch;
Brand, Jennie E. 2015. “The Far-Reaching Impact of Job Loss and Unemployment.” Annual Review of Sociology 41:1.1-1.17.
Featured (selected): Newsweek (cover story 9/20 print edition); Wall Street Journal (cover story 5/10/16 print edition); New York Times; NPR Marketplace; Wharton Business Radio; New York Magazine; Success Magazine; Thrive Global; Knowable Magazine (providing free online access); NPR Los Angeles;
Brand, Jennie E. and Juli Simon Thomas. 2014. “Job Displacement Among Single Mothers: Effects on Children’s Outcomes in Young Adulthood.” American Journal of Sociology 119(4):955-1001.
Finalist for the International Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research, 2015;
Featured (selected): New York Times; Los Angeles Times; Education Week; Inside Higher Education; The Academic Minute; Los Angeles NPR, Take Two KPCC; PsychCentral; HealthDay;
Brand, Jennie E., Fabian Pfeffer, and Sara Goldrick-Rab. 2014. “The Community College Effect Revisited: The Importance of Attending to Heterogeneity and Complex Counterfactuals.” Sociological Science 1:448-465.
Featured: Inside Higher Education; The Society Pages;
Xie, Yu, Jennie E. Brand, and Ben Jann. 2012. “Estimating Heterogeneous Treatment Effects with Observational Data.” Sociological Methodology 42: 314-347.
Top 10 Most Downloaded Article in Sociological Methodology, 2018
Brand, Jennie E. and Dwight Davis. 2011. “The Impact of College Education on Fertility: Evidence for Heterogeneous Effects.” Demography 48(3):863-887.
Featured (selected): Wall Street Journal; CBS News; i24news.tv;
Brand, Jennie E. 2010. “Civic Returns to Higher Education: A Note on Heterogeneous Effects.” Social Forces 89(2):417-433.
Bollen, Kenneth and Jennie E. Brand. 2010. “A General Panel Model with Random and Fixed Effects: A Structural Equations Approach.” Social Forces 89(1):1-34.
Brand, Jennie E. and Yu Xie. 2010. “Who Benefits Most from College? Evidence for Negative Selection in Heterogeneous Economic Returns to Higher Education.” American Sociological Review 75(2):273-302.
Revised excerpt for Grusky’s Social Stratification Reader, 4th Edition
ASA Sociology of Education James Coleman Award, 2012
ASA Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Distinguished Article Award, 2011
Sage Most Downloaded Article (of all articles published in ASR in 2009 and 2010)
ASA/ASR Featured Article, 2010
Translated into Spanish
Featured (selected): FiveThirtyEight; National Public Radio, Marketplace; National Public Radio, Pat Morrison Show; New York Times; Wall Street Journal; Chronicle of Higher Education; Insider Higher Ed; Ed Week; San Francisco Chronicle; La Opinion; Population Reference Bureau; Undergraduates Corner, ASR; The Academic Minute;
Brand, Jennie E. and Sarah A. Burgard. 2008. “Job Displacement and Social Participation over the Life Course: Findings for a Cohort of Joiners.”Social Forces 87(1): 211-242.
Featured (selected): Newsweek (cover story); New York Times Magazine; New York Times; Los Angeles Times; BusinessWeek; USA Today; Washington Post; Forbes; U.S. News & World Report; Eyewitness News; Yahoo! News (front page story);
Brand, Jennie E. and Yu Xie. 2007. “Identification and Estimation of Causal Effects with Time-Varying Treatments and Time-Varying Outcomes.”Sociological Methodology 37: 393-434.
Burgard, Sarah A., Jennie E. Brand, and James S. House. 2007. “Toward a Better Estimation of the Effect of Job Loss on Health.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 48:369-384.
Featured (selected): New York Magazine; New York Times; Newsweek; Washington Post; ABC News; Time; MSNBC; U.S. News and World Report; Reuters; Yahoo! News (front page story);
Brand, Jennie E. 2006. “The Effects of Job Displacement on Job Quality: Findings from the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 24: 275-298.
Featured (selected): Newsweek (cover story of 4/17/11 print edition); New York Times Magazine; New York Times; Los Angeles Times; Reuters; BusinessWeek; USA Today; Washington Post; Boston Globe; Forbes; U.S. News & World Report; SELF Magazine; Eyewitness News; Yahoo! News (front page story); La Opinion; AARP Magazine;
Brand, Jennie E. and Charles N. Halaby. 2006. “Regression and Matching Estimates of the Effects of Elite College Attendance on Education and Career Achievement.” Social Science Research 35: 749-770.
Featured (selected): New York Times; Wall Street Journal; Washington Post;
Awards & Grants
Honors, Awards, Fellowships
ASA Mathematical Sociology Outstanding Publication Award, 2024
Sociological Research Association, Elected Member, 2019-
ASA Methodology Leo Goodman Award, 2016
Finalist for the International Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research, 2015
ASA Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility William Julius Wilson Early Career Award (Honorable Mention), 2014
ASA Sociology of Education James Coleman Award, 2012
ASA Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Distinguished Article Award, 2011
Sage Most Downloaded Article Award, 2010
Excellence in Mentorship, UCLA Graduate Summer Research Program, 2010
William T. Grant Scholars Finalist, 2010
Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill, Fellowship, 2006-07
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholars Program University of Michigan, Fellowship 2004-06
Kathryn DuPre Lumpkin Award, Best Dissertation in Sociology, University of Wisconsin – Madison 2003-04
Villas Fellowship, University of Wisconsin -Madison, 2003
Phi Beta Kappa, University of California – San Diego, 1998
Magna cum Laude, University of California – San Diego, 1997
Grants
State of California, 2019-21 “The California Housing and Population Sample Enumeration (CHPSE) Survey and Analysis,” in collaboration with the RAND Corporation, Role: Principal Investigator at UCLA;
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) P2C, 2016-21 “California Center for Population Research (CCPR) at UCLA,” Role: Principal Investigator;
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), 2017-22 “California Center for Population Research Training Program.” Role: Principal Investigator;
National Institutes of Health R01, 2013-18, “Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Demographic Research” (PI of UCLA Subaward, Yu Xie (PI))
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), 2011-16 “California Center for Population Research Training Program.” Role: Principal Investigator;
National Science Foundation, R03, 2008-11 “Immigration and the Dynamics of Labor Market Adjustment in the United States” (Co-PI, Ted Mouw (PI))
National Institutes of Health R21, 2007-11, “Heterogeneous Treatment Effects in Social and Behavioral Sciences” (Consultant, Yu Xie (PI))
Spencer Foundation, 2007-08, “The Effects of Elementary and Secondary School Characteristics on Educational and Occupational Attainment across the Life Course” (Co-PI, John Robert Warren (PI))
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 2005-06, “Nonstandard Work and Population Health” (Co-PI, Sarah Burgard (PI))
Conference Presentations
Recent Invited Presentations
Brand, Jennie E. “Uncovering College Effect Heterogeneity.”
- UC Berkeley, Department of Sociology Colloquium Series, September 2024
- UCLA, Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS), June 2023
- Nam Lectureship Keynote Address, Center for Demography and Population Health, Florida State University, April 2023
- Institute for Analytical Sociology (IAS), International Roundtable on Computational Social Science, Norrköping, Sweden, September 2022
- University of Washington, Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, January 2022
- Pennsylvania State University, Population Research Institute, September 2021
- UCLA, Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS), June 2021
- Northwestern University, Applied Quantitative Methods Workshop, May 2021
- Ohio State University, Institute for Population Research, March 2021
- University of California, Berkeley, Demography Department, March 2021
- University of Texas, Austin, Population Research Center, February 2021
- University of Chicago, Department of Comparative Human Development, October 2020
- Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Suessmilch Lecture, September 2020
- Duke University, Population Research Center Seminar, September 2020
- Harvard University, Inequality & Social Policy Program, November 2019
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Carolina Population Center, October 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uck7hz-NaA&t=3094s
- UCLA, Society for Women in Statistics, Distinguished Women in Statistics Lecture, May 2019
Brand, Jennie E. “Causal Inference and Machine Learning for Social Science.”
- DAGStat Conference, Lecture for Statistics in the Social, Behavioral, and Educational Sciences, Berlin, Germany, 2025
- Keynote Address, Workshop on Rostock, Max Plank Institute for Demographic Research, Germany, November 2024
- UCLA, Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS), June 2024
- College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Annual Lecture on AI, Data Science, and Computational Methods, University of Florida, March 2024
- National Institutes of Health Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (OBSSR), Association of Population Centers, Population Association of America Presidents and Directors Meeting, December 2022
Brand, Jennie E. Overcoming the Odds. The Benefits of Completing College for Unlikely Graduates.
- Institute of Education Sciences, Teachers College, Columbia University, October 2024
- Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility, Conference on Schools, Inequality, and Social Mobility, University of Chicago, November 2024
- Jeffrey A. Grigg Memorial Lecture, School of Education and Hopkins Population Center, Johns Hopkins University, March 2024
- Author Meets Critic Session, American Sociological Association, August 2023
- Russell Sage Foundation Book Conference, October 2021
Brand, Jennie E. “The Far-Reaching and Disparate Effects of Job Loss.”
- Institute for Employment Research, Research Institute of the Federal Employment Agency, Nuremberg, Germany, Keynote Address, January 2023
- Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the National Institute on Aging, “Economic Vulnerability, Work across the Life Course, and Health Disparities” Workshop, September 2022
Brand, Jennie E. “Causal Inference and Social Mobility.”
- National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Committee on Population (CPOP) and Committee on National Statistics (CNSTAT), Workshop on Strengthening the Evidence Base to Improve Economic and Social Mobility in the United States, February 2022
Brand, Jennie E. “Heterogeneous Causal Effects.”
- GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, Mannheim, Germany, Keynote Address, October 2021
Brand, Jennie E. “Academic Midlife Panel.”
- DemSemX, Population Center Seminar, Sponsored by Bowling Green, Cornell, Michigan, Minnesota, Penn State, UCLA, UT-Austin and UW-Madison, July 2021
Gabriel, Stuart, Benjamin Fryd, Jennie E. Brand, Michael Tzen, and Neal Futz. “Recent Trends in California Migration.”
- Briefing for the California State Assembly, November 2021
- Briefing for the California Senate, November 2021
- Briefing for the Office of Governor Gavin Newsom, November 2021
- University of California, Office of the President, February 2021
Brand, Jennie E. “Uncovering Effect Heterogeneity using Tree-Based Machine Learning.” Methodological Workshop
- Syracuse University, Cornell University, and SUNY-Albany, Center for Aging and Policy Studies (co-sponsored with University of Southern California, Stanford University, University of Texas, Austin, and University of Wisconsin, Madison), March 2021
Brand Jennie E. “Education and Training in the NLSY.”
- Bureau of Labor Statistics, “The Need for a New National Longitudinal Survey of Youth” Conference, October 2020
Brand, Jennie E., Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, and Yu Xie. “Unequal Families, Unequal Effects: How Parental Divorce Differentially Impacts Children’s Educational Attainment”
- University of Oxford, Nuffield College, Sociology Colloquium Seminar, May 2018
- Yale University, Department of Sociology, Center for Empirical Research on Stratification and Inequality, March 2018
- University of Michigan, Population Studies Center, November 2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCM3ob3rW3E
- Stanford University, Department of Sociology Inaugural Lecture, October 2017
- University of Pennsylvania, Population Studies Center, September 2017
- Princeton University, Office of Population Research, April 2017
- Harvard University, Center for Population and Development Studies, April 2017
- University of California, Irvine, Center for Demographic and Social Analysis, January 2017
Recent Conference Presentations
Jeon, Nanum and Jennie E. Brand. “College Completion Effects on Reducing COVID-Era Job Loss by Race and Skin Color.”
- American Sociological Association, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 2024
Xi, Jiahui, Jennie E, Brand, Tanvi Shinkre, and Nanum Jeon. “Flexibly Detecting Treatment Effect Heterogeneity: An Application to the Benefits of College in Reducing Poverty.”
- American Sociological Association, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, August 2023
Rouhani, Shiva, Xi Song, and Jennie E. Brand. “Like Parent, Like Child: Sequence Analysis of Inter-and Intragenerational Occupational Mobility.”
- International Sociological Association, Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28), Ann Arbor, Michigan, August 2023
- PARC Aging Retreat, University of Pennsylvania, May 2023
- Population Association of America, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2023
Jeon, Nanum and Jennie E. Brand. “The Impact of College Degrees on Reducing COVID-Era Labor Market Racial Disparities.”
- Population Association of America, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2023
Bozick, Robert, Lane Burgette, Ethan Sharygin, Beverly Weidmer, Michael Tzen, Regina Shih, Aaron Kofner, Jennie E. Brand, and Hiram Beltran-Sanchez. “Evaluating the Accuracy of 2020 Census Block-Level Estimates in California.”
- Population Association of America, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 2023
Lundberg, Ian and Jennie E. Brand. “The Nonlinear and Heterogeneous Effects of Parental Income on Children’s Educational Attainment.”
- American Sociological Association, Los Angeles, California, August 2022
- Population Association of America, Atlanta, Georgia, April 2022
Brand, Jennie E. “Returns to Education” Session Discussant
- Population Association of America, Atlanta, Georgia, April 2022
Song, Xi, Jennie E. Brand, Xiuqi Yany, and Michael Lachanski. “Declining Jobs, Declining Opportunities? Mobility of Workers in Occupations with Job Contraction.”
- International Sociological Association, Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28), South Bend, Indiana, August 2022
- Population Association of America, Atlanta, Georgia, April 2022
Brand, Jennie E. Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Roundtable Session Presider
- American Sociological Association, August 2021
Rouhani, Shiva, Xi Song, and Jennie E. Brand. “Trajectories of Downward Mobility in the U.S.”
- Population Association of America, May 2021
Brand, Jennie E. “COVID-19 and Job Loss” Session Discussant
- Population Association of America, May 2021
Brand, Jennie E. “Returns to Education in Young Adulthood” Session Discussant
- Population Association of America, May 2021
Ahearn, Caitlin, Xiang Zhou, and Jennie E. Brand. “How, and for Whom, Does Higher Education Increase Voting?”
- American Sociological Association, San Francisco, California, August 2020 (cancelled due to COVID-19)
Brand, Jennie E., Jiahui Xu, Bernard Koch, and Pablo Geraldo. “Uncovering Sociological Effect Heterogeneity using Machine-Learning.”
- Population Association of America, Washington D.C., April 2020 (cancelled due to COVID-19)
- American Sociological Association Methodology Section Mid-Year Meeting, March 2020 (cancelled due to COVID-19)
- International Sociological Association, Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28), Princeton, New Jersey August 2019
- American Sociological Association, New York, New York, August 2019
Brand, Jennie E. “Causes and Consequences of Educational Inequality” Session Discussant
- American Sociological Association, New York, New York, August 2019
Villalobos, Amber, Jennie E. Brand, and Jiahui Xu. “Does College Prevent Single Parenthood? Uncovering Effect Heterogeneity using Propensity and Machine Learning Methods.”
- American Sociological Association, New York, New York, August 2019
- Population Association of America, Austin, Texas, April 2019
Cheng, Siwei, Jennie E. Brand, Xiang Zhou, Yu Xie, and Michael Hout. “College Premium Revisited: Heterogeneous Returns to College over the Life Course”
- International Sociological Association, Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28) Plenary Session, Princeton, New Jersey August 2019
- Population Association of America, Denver, Colorado, April 2018
- Heterogeneous Effects in Demographic Research Meeting, Princeton University, March 2018
Brand, Jennie E., Ravaris Moore, Xi Song, and Yu Xie. “Unequal Families, Unequal Effects: How Parental Divorce Differential Impacts Children’s Educational Attainment”
- Population Association of America, Chicago, Illinois, April 2017
- International Sociological Association, Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility (RC28), Cologne, Germany, March 2017
- Heterogeneous Effects in Demographic Research Meeting, Princeton University, April 2016
- Heterogeneous Effects in Demographic Research Meeting, University of Michigan, March 2015
Graduate Students
Completed Supervised Masters Students
Matthew Curry. 2010. Are Ballers Scholars? Community College Student Athletes’ Academic Performance.
Juli Simon-Thomas. 2011. The Importance of Peers and Role Models for Adolescent Girls.
Ravaris Moore. 2013. Mechanisms that Link Violence Exposure to High School Academic Achievement.
Annie Lee. 2013. Testing the Double Jeopardy Hypothesis.
Danielle Callendar. 2015. Effects of Elite College Completion on Job Quality.
Amber Villalobos. 2015. Teacher Social Origins and Student Success.
Ryan Cho. 2016. Disaggregating Intergenerational Education Effects.
Caitlin Ahearn. 2018. Adolescent Occupational Direction.
Pablo Geraldo. 2019. Primary and Secondary Effects of Vocational Tracking.
Taylor Acquino. 2020. Multiracial Adults and the Gender Gap in College Attainment.
Bowei Hu. 2020. Investing, Subsidizing, and Borrowing.
Taylor Aquino. 2020. Multiracial Adults and the Gender Gap in College Attainment
Shiva Rouhani. 2021. Trajectories of Downward Mobility.
Completed Supervised Ph.D. Recipients
Shabnam Shenasi. (co-chair) 2014. Statistician, U.S. Census Bureau. Ethnic Visibility, Context, and Xenophobia: A European Perspective.
Yool Choi. 2014. Postdoctoral Fellowship, Hanyang University, South Korea. Educational Expansion and Persistent Inequality: The Effects of Extracurricular Activities on Educational and Labor Market Outcomes.
Juli Simon-Thomas. 2015. Bell Fellow, Harvard University. The Effects of Changes in Parental Jobs, Partnership Statuses, and Residence on Children’s Educational Attainment.
Yelizavetta Kofman. 2015. Sociologist, Unitive Software. The Effects of Precarious Employment on the Transition to Adulthood and Political Participation.
Matthew Curry. 2016. Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute for Applied Economic and Social Research, University of Melbourne. The Returns to Higher Education in Economic Recessions.
Annie Lee. 2018. Research Project Director, UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research. Divergent Paths to Elite Degrees.
Ravaris Moore. 2018. Assistant Professor of Sociology, New York University. The Effects of Student Exposure to Crime and Violence on Educational Attainment and Subject Proficiency among California Public School Students.
John Sullivan. 2020. Postdoctoral Research Associate in Population Studies, Brown University. Structure and Segregation.
Amber Villalobos. 2021. Postdoctoral Fellow, Higher Education, Race, and the Economy (HERE) Lab, UC Merced. Attainment in the Era of High Expectations.
Ryan Cho. 2022. Research Scientist, Demography and Survey Sciences Division, Facebook. Thank You for Your Service: A Look at the Effects of Military on the Life Course.
Pablo Geraldo (Co-Chair, with Jacob Foster). 2023. Postdoctoral Fellow, Oxford University. Essays on Credible Causal Inference with Applications to Educational Inequality.
Caitlin Ahearn. 2023. Postdoctoral Fellow, Stanford University. The Effects of Less-Selective College Enrollment on Early Adult Outcomes.
