Geoff Wodtke’s research is in the areas of neighborhood effects and urban poverty, group conflict and racial attitudes, class structure and income inequality, and methods of causal inference in observational research. He is currently working on several projects dealing with the impact of neighborhood poverty on child development, the link between private business ownership and growing income inequality, and new methods for estimating causal effects in longitudinal studies.

Yu Xie is Otis Dudley Duncan Distinguished University Professor of Sociology, Statistics, and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. At Peking University, he is Visiting Chair Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Social Research. He is also a Research Professor at the Population Studies Center and the Survey Research Center of the Institute for Social Research, and a Faculty Associate at the Center for Chinese Studies.