Sohee Shin

I am a sociologist and demographer studying how social relationships and institutions shape inequalities in resources, opportunities, and well-being. My research centers on family, gender, and migration, with related projects on employment and health and on quantitative demographic methods.

My dissertation begins with the paradox of global hypergamy: marriage migration to a wealthier country may promise upward mobility, yet migrant women can continue to face substantial inequalities within marriage and the receiving society. Focusing on marriage migrant women in South Korea, I examine how spouses’ resources and gender ideologies are associated with women’s well-being, the division of housework, and labor market outcomes. The first study shifts attention from marrying up in education to the absolute educational attainment of both spouses, highlighting cross-border marriage as a context for understanding family stratification. Two further studies examine how spouses’ gender ideologies condition the relationship between relative income and housework, and how relative educational standing and college attainment jointly relate to women’s employment and occupational status. The study of educational pairing and life satisfaction received the 2025 Student Paper Award in Migration Policy and Research (First Place) from the Migration Research and Training Centre and the Korean Ministry of Justice.

My research on employment and health extends this interest in social inequality to working-life experiences. Using longitudinal data, I examine how occupational class trajectories from young adulthood to midlife are associated with physical and mental health at age 50, and how unemployment duration relates to hypertension risk across racial groups. This work investigates how employment histories reflect cumulative advantage and disadvantage, with particular attention to differences in material resources and employment relations.

Alongside these substantive projects, I develop quantitative demographic methods in collaboration with Prof. Tim F. Liao. Using simulation studies, we evaluate age–period–cohort models and develop guidance for identifying, estimating, and interpreting cohort effects. This research examines how methodological choices affect conclusions about population patterns and social change. My work has received support through the 2023 Rockefeller Fellowship on Immigrant Integration at the Rockefeller Institute of Government and a Summer Writing Fellowship at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.