Jen-Chen Chao 趙振辰

Hi! I am a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at Harvard University and a Doctoral Trainee at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. I primarily use large-scale data and quantitative methods to study economic inequality, with a focus on the roles of education, the labor market, and demographic changes. I also have a keen interest in understanding how social policies can mitigate inequality.

In my current project, I examine how the strength of school-to-work linkages — the degree to which a field of study channels graduates into a particular set of occupations — shapes the equalizing power of a college degree. In other work, I investigate how changes in the distribution of college majors and their wage returns have shaped the gender wage gap among college-educated workers in the United States. With collaborators, I study the economic returns to “some college,” the mechanisms by which high schools contribute to achievement gaps, and the joint effects of educational attainment and family structure on trends in income inequality.

I began my academic journey at Yale Kindergarten in Tainan, Taiwan (not New Haven), survived three years at an all-boys high school, and later earned both my B.A. and M.A. degrees in Sociology from National Taiwan University. Outside of work, I am a hardcore baseball fan — more than 20 years with the CTBC Brothers in CPBL, the Red Sox since moving to Boston, plus NPB and KBO on the side. I always root for Taiwanese players in the minor leagues; after all, being a PhD student is pretty much the same — from overseas, swinging for the big leagues.

You can find my CV here.