Gender gaps in reading increase during unplanned and planned school closures | PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 🧪

the front page of the paper, which can be read in: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/pops.70056

we have a new paper in the April issue of Political Psychology.

in this (admittedly quite lovely) new paper, @stephenvaisey.com, @pablobellode.bsky.social and I make a simple point: using panel data to understand belief change is very hard.

we highlight an empirical intractability in the process:

Very happy about this publication. We managed to pool two unique data sources: Behavioral reading data from the reading app Bookbites (used in many schools in DK) and population level data on library-loans. Both sources of data confirmed the same trend regarding gender differences in reading.

Boys need a structured school environment more than girls do to maintain their motivation to read. Reading is, as most people know, super important for learning, concentration, and other good things: reading skills are a major predictor of your future educational career.

news.ku.dk/all_news/202...

When schools close, due to COVID-19 lockdown or holidays, the gender gap in reading increases. This is a challenge as boys already struggle more with reading skills than girls.

New paper in @pnas.org with Emil Smith, @davidreimer.bsky.social & @madsjaeger.bsky.social

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Boys ditch books when schools close—girls keep reading: Study When holidays or pandemics shut down schools, gender differences in children's reading habits widen; boys stop reading, while girls continue, according to a new study from the University of Copenhagen.

During school closures and holidays, boys' reading declines while girls maintain their reading habits, widening the gender gap in reading engagement outside structured school environments. doi.org/hbtm4f

When supply is far greater than anyone can have full knowledge of, we need systems that reduce the amount of information and simplify the choice process.

Traditional cultural intermediaries still have considerable power to impact cultural consumption.

Even the most culturally active consumers are not fully autonomous; they also use quality signals to steer behavior.

Preaching to the converted: Cultural intermediaries and cultural consumer behavior This article studies the impact of signals from cultural intermediaries. Who aligns cultural behavior in response to signals from which cultural inter…

Ever wondered who use reviews to direct behavior? I did.

So I collected data on literary reviews and awards and studied who loan these books from libraries following favorable quality signals.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Do researchers share their code upon request? Does running their orginal code on the original data produce the original results? We provide evidence in a new Royal Society Open Science publication. Studying more than 1,000 articles which use data from the European Social Survey, we find that... 🧵

💸🚨I am hiring 2 Postdocs for my ERC-funded project SOCDEBT on #debt dynamics across countries. One position: #SocialStratification + strong quantitative skills. The other: qualitative research and #EconomicSociology. waitkus.github.io/SOCDEBT/ 🚨💸

The paradox of inequality that isn’t: rising economic inequality depresses and polarizes citizens’ belief in meritocracy Abstract. This study examines how rising income inequality has been impacting individuals’ belief in merit-based success, using three decades of survey dat

🔍 How does economic inequality impact beliefs in meritocracy?

Using comprehensive survey data from 39 advanced capitalist democracies over more than three decades, Markus Gangl & I examine how rising economic inequality has been shaping citizens' belief in meritocracy.
🔗 doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwag016

Yesterday, it was Women’s Day

Today, you can read our paper on parenthood and women’s under-representation in academia

Parenthood leads to women leaving academia - not just career slowdown

👇👇👇

Joint work with @cairosofie.bsky.social, @riaivandic.bsky.social and @valentinatartari.bsky.social

🚨New paper in the Spanish Journal of Sociological Research (REIS).

We analyse how class inequalities in youth emancipation in Spain have changed over the last 50 years.

The main finding: the class gradient has been reversed.

reis.cis.es/index.php/re...

🚨Forthcoming paper, @aeajournals.bsky.social 🚨#econsky
A thread 🧵 on "The Economics of Age at School Entry: Insights from Evidence and Methods". Humbled to work w/ @mariagraziacavallo.bsky.social, @bdhuey.bsky.social, Levi Halewyck & Simon ter Meulen 1/9

Tak ❤️ Jeps til hverdag i Emdrup - så ungerne kan blive boende her i Ørestad. Kom forbi og sig hej hvis du er derude!

Gender of children and their own reading. I have some of the same data for parents reading investments as well.

There it actually looks like (child) gender differences are smaller than in children’s own reading (that part didn’t make it into the paper). I’d love to hear more about your project!

That is so nice of you!

I actually have a paper coming out shortly (a week or two maybe) about gendered vacation gaps in reading that I hope you might find interesting.

The job market is harsh and healthy communities are paramount

I am lucky to have such a loving and supportive one ❤️‍🩹 So, to all who gave me space to panic (once more), picked me up when I was low (literally, a couple of times) and held my hand to keep me moving: Thank you. I hope to repay the favor🙏

I think it is problematic that the years when many are building families and raising young children are so insecure. We lose great researchers who can’t or won’t deal with that.

I have been privileged to stay in one place - I did not want to uproot my children. Not everyone is that fortunate.

I am also beyond grateful for the stability of permanent employment

Most who have been around me the last years know that I have struggled with the uncertainty of this career. Like most young researchers I know, I have wasted a lot of time thinking maybe I was not cut out to do research. But I am.

I am incredibly excited that May 1st I will be Associate Professor of Educational Sociology at The Danish School of Education, Aarhus University 🤩

I am so happy to get to work with amazing new colleagues and students. I could think of no better home for my research on reading and stratification 📚

While most people prefer equal inheritance, wealthy individuals are more willing to support unequal transfers when they help preserve wealth across generations ➡️ based on new experimental evidence now published with @natrinh.bsky.social and @dariatisch.bsky.social in @sfjournal.bsky.social

I’d love it if it’s just love for geometry!

Probably! But six books in I still don’t understand the title. They are beautiful though.

New research on postpartum depression as a mechanism of the motherhood penalty (i.e., mothers' reduced lifetime earnings) in Denmark

"The penalties are concentrated among less educated mothers and those in less family-friendly jobs."

(Application to the US is left as an exercise for the reader)

🧵 New WP with @kaimiele.bsky.social. We document 2 unsettling patterns in mental health care: 1) despite universal coverage, few individuals with mental illness receive guideline-consistent treatment, and 2) the more severe the illness, the lower the treatment uptake & the longer the wait times. 1/n

🧵 New version of our paper (@bcegerod.bsky.social) is finally online: "How Many is Enough? Sample Size in Staggered Difference-in-Differences Designs"
We show that even well-identified DiD studies are often underpowered; sample sizes needed are surprisingly large
Paper: osf.io/preprints/os... 1/6

Do ordinary Republicans and Democrats really avoid each other in everyday life? In a new working paper with Delia Baldassarri, we present descriptive and experimental evidence to challenge the view that partisanship drives the formation of social relationships.

osf.io/preprints/so...

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Introducing Causion: A web app for playing with DAGs | Peder M. Isager Personal website of Dr. Peder M. Isager

New blog post introducing Causion - a web app for causal inference teaching and learning: pedermisager.org/blog/causion....