Hello! I’m Yanwen Wang, a Post-Doctoral Associate in the Division of Social Science at New York University Abu Dhabi.

My research focuses on stratification, demography, and well-being. I completed my Ph.D. in Sociology at the National University of Singapore in 2025, and my dissertation examines the subjective experiences of educational mobility and sorting. My Ph.D. advisor is Zheng Mu.

One area of my research investigates how individuals and their family members subjectively experience social mobility and stratification. My first study, published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, examines how intergenerational educational mobility, conceptualized as a family project, affects the well-being of primary movers and their parents, with attention to family structures and gender dynamics. Building on this work, another study of mine explores subjective experiences of educational sorting across European societies, also published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility.

Another line of my research documents and explains trends in family formation and reproduction in Asia. I documented the rising trend of voluntary childlessness among married couples in Singapore (published in Advances in Life Course Research), in contrast to the strengthening ties between marriage and fertility in China (published in Family Relations). My recent works explain intermarriage patterns concerning education, race/ethnicity, and caste in various developing Asian countries.