Labor markets worldwide have undergone significant structural transformations, marked by the expansion of nonstandard employment, growing employment insecurity, and widening disparities in job quality. A central motivation of my research agenda is to understand how precarious work becomes a source of inequality through its interconnections with family resources, demographic processes, and institutional contexts. I develop this agenda through three critical inquiries:
First, how does precarious work shape demographic behaviors and outcomes?
I examine how nonstandard employment, employment insecurity, and unequal job quality influence demographic outcomes across the life course. This line of research treats precarious employment not simply as a labor market condition, but as a life-course constraint that shapes people’s resources, security, and ability to make consequential demographic decisions. Across different institutional contexts, I investigate how employment conditions shape migration, fertility, and population health, and for whom these consequences are most pronounced. More specifically:
Job quality and migration. My research on internal migration in China examines how job quality shapes migrants' decisions to move again (European Journal of Population, 2026) and their intentions to settle in destination cities. This agenda also extends to my currently funded Public Policy Research Funding Scheme (PPRFS) project examining how employment quality shapes the integration and settlement of highly educated migrants in Hong Kong.
Employment precarity and fertility outcomes. One of my current projects examines how employment insecurity and changing labor market conditions shape fertility and family-formation intentions among young couples in China.
Precarious work and health across the life course. Using U.S. data, my ongoing research examines how exposure to precarious employment accumulates over the life course and contributes to health inequality in older age.
Second, how do work and family processes reproduce inequality within and across generations?
I investigate how employment conditions and family processes jointly shape life chances within and across generations. This research considers how parental employment, family structure, divorce, intergenerational support, and parent-child relationships organize access to economic, social, and developmental resources. Across these studies, I am particularly interested in when families buffer labor market disadvantage, when they reinforce it, and how these processes contribute to the persistence of inequality over the life course. More specifically:
Parental employment, family resources, and children's development. My studies examine how parents' employment conditions shape children's cognitive and socioemotional outcomes, including studies of maternal work and children's cognitive development in Japan (Demography, 2026), the role of household income and grandparental support in child well-being in Japan (Chinese Journal of Sociology, 2020), and mothers' nonstandard work schedules and children's socioemotional outcomes in the U.S (Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 2023).
Work, intergenerational relationships, and the transmission of inequality. My research examines how employment conditions interact with relationships and exchanges between parents and children to shape outcomes across the life course, such as nonstandard employment and support for older parents in urban China (Chinese Journal of Sociology, 2024), paternal involvement and household employment type in relation to adult gender ideology in Japan (Social Science Research, R&R), and ongoing work on divorce, employment histories, and mothers' economic well-being in Japan.
Third, how do institutional and cultural contexts condition the consequences of precarious work and family change?
I am interested in how the consequences of precarious work and family change would vary across institutional and cultural settings. Focusing especially on East Asia, I study how labor market institutions, housing systems, gender relations, and family norms shape the ways employment insecurity translates into unequal outcomes. My emerging work extends this agenda by using computational and LLM-assisted approaches to examine changing public narratives of work, family, care, and gender. Specifically:
Institutional and social variation in the consequences of precarious work. My comparative research shows how housing institutions shape the link between nonstandard employment and homeownership in Russia and urban China (Social Forces, 2023), while my work on Japan examines how gendered labor amrket system and gender norms shape the impacts of nonstandard employment on subjective well-being (Journal of Marriage and Family, 2021) and perceived insecurity (British Journal of Sociology, R&R).
Changing cultural narratives of work, family, and gender. I study how institutional discourse and cultural narratives shape understandings of gender, work, and family roles. My recent research traces changes in state gender discourse in China (Frontiers in Sociology, 2026). Another recently funded project would use LLM-assisted computational methods to examine changing narratives of work, family, care, and gender in China.