Zhen Zeng

Assistant Professor of Sociology
4440 Sewell Social Sciences
(608) 262-4436
Fax: (608) 262-8400
zzeng@ssc.wisc.edu

Alternate Webpage
Office Hours: R 2-4 (Spr'09)

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interest Statement
Zeng’s research focuses on gender and racial disparities in the labor market. She has examined three aspects of labor market processes: immigrant economic assimilation, trajectories of occupational attainment across the life course, and workplace authority inequality. Her work on earnings disparities between Asian American and white men reexamines the overeducation hypothesis which states that Asian Americans face a net earnings disadvantage when their overachievement in education is considered. By decomposing the Asian-white earnings gap to the proportions attributable to race, nativity, and place of education, she demonstrates that Asian Americans’ earnings disadvantage is entirely due to the lower value of foreign human capital Asian immigrants attained prior to immigration. Zeng's work on workplace authority inequality argues that the popular glass ceiling metaphor, which describes the subtle barrier women and minorities face in accessing top managerial positions, is a myth. She found two pieces of evidence against the glass ceiling effect: (a) women and racial minorities' managerial underrepresentation is largely due to their greater likelihood to exist from managerial positions rather than lower rates of upward mobility, and (b) women and minorities face a greater obstacle in promotion at the lower level than at the upper level. In a different line of research, Zeng has developed a choice model that separates the effects of preference and opportunity and applied the model to study friendship choice among adolescents. The study finds evidence for homophily and status asymmetry along the dimensions of family backgrounds and GPA in friendship choice, but the most important factor is racial homophily.

CDE Research Theme Working Groups
Demography of Inequality
Fertility/Families and Households