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

My research focuses on stratification, demography, and well-being. One stream of my research investigates how individuals and their family members experience educational sorting and stratification. My first dissertation chapter, 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 particular attention to family structures and gender dynamics. Building on this work, my second dissertation chapter, also published in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, explores the subjective experiences of educational sorting across European societies.

Another line of my research documents and explains trends in family formation and reproduction in Asia. I have 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 work explains marital sorting patterns related to education (R&R from Demography), race/ethnicity (R&R from Social Science Research), caste (R&R from Research in Social Stratification and Mobility), and ideational factors.

I received a Ph.D. in Sociology from the National University of Singapore in 2025, supervised by Zheng Mu. I also hold a Master of Arts from the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree from Nanjing University.