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. See CCPR Working Papers for recent working manuscripts and Google Scholar and Pub Med for published works.

Publications

Brand, Jennie E. 2023. Overcoming the Odds. The Benefits of Completing College for Unlikely Graduates. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

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 [50^thAnniversary 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.

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, Keynotes

Keynote Address, Institute for Employment Research, Nürnberg, Germany 2023

Keynote Address, GESIS Institute for the Social Sciences, Leibniz, Germany 202

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

Invited Presentations (since ~2016)

Brand, Jennie E. “Uncovering College Effect Heterogeneity using Machine Learning.”

• 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. “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, Machine Learning, and Social Science.”

• 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

Lundberg, Ian and Jennie E. Brand. “The Nonlinear and Heterogeneous Effects of Parental Income on Children’s Educational Attainment.”

• University of Washington, Center for Statistics and the Social Sciences, May 2022
• New York University, Department of Sociology, March 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. Overcoming the Odds. The Far-Reaching Benefits for Unlikely College Graduates.

• Russell Sage Foundation Book Conference, October 2021

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. Discussion of “Disparate Experiences of Nonemployment: Examining the Role of Social Positioning” by Lauren Taylor

• Harvard University, Inequality & Social Policy Program, November 2019

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

Brand, Jennie E. “The Far-Reaching Impact of Job Loss and Unemployment.”

• UC Berkeley, Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Special Event, Co-Sponsored by the Department of Economics, Berkeley Population Center, and the Center for the Study of Law and Society, March 2018
• Columbia University, Center for the Study of Wealth and Inequality Seminar Series, March 2016
• University of Southern California, Population Research Center, October 2015
• UCLA, Human Development and Psychology Division, April 2015
• RAND Corporation, April 2015
• University of North Carolina -Chapel Hill, Carolina Population Center, March 2015

Brand, Jennie E., “An Overview of Training at the California Center for Population Research” Webinar

• University of Michigan, Social Science Data Analysis Network at the Population Studies Center, November 2017

Brand, Jennie E., “A Broad Overview of Empirical Research in Stratification and Inequality”

• UC Berkeley, Department of Sociology Introduction to Sociology Lecture, October 2017

Brand, Jennie E. “Who Benefits Most from College?”

• UCLA Spotlight Sociology, Inaugural Public Lecture, March 2017
• UCLA Social Science Division, Knowledge for Good Public Lecture, June 2016

Conference Presentations (since ~2016)

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

Brand, Jennie E. “The Social and Economic Context of Worker Displacement.”

• Population Association of America, Washington D.C., April 2016

Brand, Jennie E. “Returns to Higher Education” Session Discussant

• Population Association of America, Washington D.C., April 2016

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.

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.