Stephen L. Morgan

Books

• Morgan, Stephen L. 2005. On the Edge of Commitment: Educational Attainment and Race in the United States. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  Go to the Stanford UP website or Amazon to order a copy.

• Morgan, Stephen L. and Christopher Winship. 2007. Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Go to the Cambridge UP website or Amazon to order a copy.

  Click here for known errata.

• Morgan, Stephen L. and Christopher Winship. 2015. Counterfactuals and Causal Inference: Methods and Principles for Social Research (Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

  Go to the Cambridge UP website or Amazon to order a copy.

  Click here for known errata.

Edited Volumes

• Kalleberg, Arne L., Stephen L. Morgan, John F. Myles, and Rachel A. Rosenfeld, eds. 2004. Inequality: Structures, Dynamics and Mechanisms: Essays in Honor of Aage B. Sørensen. Published as Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Volume 21. Amsterdam: Elsevier.

  Go to the Elsevier website or Amazon to order a copy.

• Morgan, Stephen L., David B. Grusky, and Gary S. Fields, eds. 2006. Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research in Sociology and Economics. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  Go to the Stanford UP website or Amazon to order a copy.

• Morgan, Stephen L., ed. 2013. Handbook of Causal Analysis for Social Research. New York: Springer.

  Go to the Springer website or Amazon to order a copy.

  Click here for the Table of Contents and Introduction.

• Alexander, Karl and Stephen L. Morgan, eds. 2016. The Coleman Report and Educational Inequality Fifty Years Later. Volume 2, Issue 5, of RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

  Go to the Russell Sage Foundation website to download the volume.

Articles and Book Chapters (chronological within substantive area)

Education

• Morgan, Stephen L. 1996. "Trends in Black-White Differences in Educational Expectations: 1980–92." Sociology of Education 69:308–319.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 1998. "Adolescent Educational Expectations: Rationalized, Fantasized, or Both?" Rationality and Society 10:131–62.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Aage B. Sørensen. 1999. "Parental Networks, Social Closure, and Mathematics Learning: A Test of Coleman's Social Capital Explanation of School Effects." American Sociological Review 64:661–681. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Aage B. Sørensen. 1999. "Theory, Measurement, and Specification Issues in Models of Network Effects on Learning: Reply to Carbonaro and to Hallinan and Kubitschek." American Sociological Review 64:694–700.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2000. "Social Capital, Capital Goods, and the Production of Learning." Journal of Socio-Economics 29:591–5.
• Sørensen, Aage B. and Stephen L. Morgan. 2000. "School Effects: Theoretical and Methodological Issues." Pp. 137–160 in Maureen T. Hallinan, ed., Handbook of the Sociology of Education. New York: Kluwer/Plenum.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2001. "Counterfactuals, Causal Effect Heterogeneity, and the Catholic School Effect on Learning." Sociology of Education 74:341–374.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2002. "Modeling Preparatory Commitment and Non-Repeatable Decisions: Information Processing, Preference Formation, and Educational Attainment." Rationality and Society 14:387–429.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2004. "Methodologist as Arbitrator: Five Models for Black-White Differences in the Causal Effect of Expectations on Attainment." Sociological Methods and Research 33:3–53.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Jal D. Mehta. 2004. "Beyond the Laboratory: Evaluating the Survey Evidence for the Disidentification Explanation of Black-White Differences in Achievement." Sociology of Education 77:82–101.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Young-Mi Kim. 2006. "Inequality of Conditions and Intergenerational Mobility: Changing Patterns of Educational Attainment in the United States." Pp. 165–94 in Morgan, Stephen L., David B. Grusky, and Gary S. Fields, eds., Mobility and Inequality. Stanford: Stanford University Press. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Mark W. McKerrow. 2007. "Human Capital Development and the Frontiers of Research in the Sociology of Education." Pp. 185–225 in Garnett Picot et al., eds., Fulfilling Potential, Creating Success. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Jennifer J. Todd. 2009. "Intergenerational Closure and Academic Achievement in High School: A New Evaluation of Coleman's Conjecture." Sociology of Education 82:267–86. See also the online Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2012. "Models of College Entry in the United States and the Challenges of Estimating Primary and Secondary Effects." Sociological Methods and Research 41:17–56. [Replication files available here.]
• Morgan, Stephen L., Michael W. Spiller, and Jennifer J. Todd. 2013. "Class Origins, High School Graduation, and College Entry in the United States." Pp. 279–305 in Michelle Jackson, ed., Determined to Succeed? Performance Versus Choice in Educational Attainment. Stanford: Stanford University Press. (The link is to the penultimate chapter draft.) See also the online Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L., Dafna Gelbgiser, and Kim A. Weeden. 2013. "Feeding the Pipeline: Gender, Occupational Plans, and College Major Selection." Social Science Research 42:989–1005. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L., Theodore S. Leenman, Jennifer J. Todd, and Kim A. Weeden. 2013. "Stutter-Step Models of Performance in School." Social Forces 91:1451–74. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L., Theodore S. Leenman, Jennifer J. Todd, and Kim A. Weeden. 2013. "Occupational Plans, Beliefs About Educational Requirements, and Patterns of College Entry." Sociology of Education 86:197–217. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Dafna Gelbgiser. 2014. "Mexican Ancestry, Immigrant Generation, and Educational Attainment in the United States." Sociological Science 1:397–422. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Alexander, Karl and Stephen L. Morgan. 2016. "The Coleman Report at Fifty: Its Legacy and Implications for Future Research on Equality of Opportunity." RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2(5):1–16. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Sol Bee Jung. 2016. "Still No Effect of Resources, Even in the New Gilded Age?" RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 2(5):83–116. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Daniel T. Shackelford. 2018. "School and Teacher Effects." Pp. 513–34 in Barbara Schneider, ed., Handbook of the Sociology of Education in the 21st Century. New York: Springer. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Weeden, Kim A., Dafna Gelbgiser, and Stephen L. Morgan. 2020. "Pipeline Dreams: Occupational Plans and Gender Differences in STEM Major Persistence and Completion." Sociology of Education 93:297–314. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2025. "Back to Predicting Future Educational Attainment: Two New Measures and Their Validity." Socius 11:1–20. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.

Public Opinion

• Morgan, Stephen L. and Emily S. Taylor Poppe. 2012. "The Consequences of International Comparisons for Public Support of K-12 Education: Evidence from a National Survey Experiment." Educational Researcher 41:262–68. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Emily S. Taylor Poppe. 2015. "A Design and a Model for Investigating the Heterogeneity of Context Effects in Public Opinion Surveys." Sociological Methodology 45:184–222. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Minhyoung Kang. 2015. "A New Conservative Cold Front? Democrat and Republican Responsiveness to the Passage of the Affordable Care Act." Sociological Science 2:502–26. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Jiwon Lee. 2017. "Social Class and Party Identification During the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Presidencies." Sociological Science 4:394–423. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Jiwon Lee. 2017. "The White Working Class and Voter Turnout in U.S. Presidential Elections, 2004 to 2016." Sociological Science 4:656–85. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Jiwon Lee. 2018. "Trump Voters and the White Working Class." Sociological Science 5:234–45. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2018. "Status Threat, Material Interests, and the 2016 Presidential Vote." Socius 4:1–17. See also the GitHub repository here or download as a zip file here.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2018. "Correct Interpretations of Fixed-effects Models, Specification Decisions, and Self-reports of Intended Votes: A Response to Mutz." Socius 4:1–7. See also the GitHub repository here or download as a zip file here.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Jiwon Lee. 2019. "Economic Populism and Bandwagon Bigotry: Obama-to-Trump Voters and the Cross Pressures of the 2016 Election." Socius 5:1–15. See also the online Supplement. See also a related opinion piece: "How Democrats Can Win Back Obama-Trump Voters in 2020." Bloomberg, June 11, 2019.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2022. "Prejudice, Bigotry, and Support for Compensatory Interventions to Address Black-White Inequalities: Evidence from the General Social Survey, 2006 to 2020." Sociological Science 9:1–26. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2023. "A Double-Diamond Retrospective on Modeling Change in Attitudes and Opinions." Social Science Research 109:102809. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Jiwon Lee. 2024. "A Rolling Panel Model of Cohort, Period, and Aging Effects for the Analysis of the General Social Survey." Sociological Methods and Research 53:369–420.

Methodology

• Winship, Christopher and Stephen L. Morgan. 1999. "The Estimation of Causal Effects from Observational Data." Annual Review of Sociology 25:659–706.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and David J. Harding. 2006. "Matching Estimators of Causal Effects: Prospects and Pitfalls in Theory and Practice." Sociological Methods and Research 35:3–60.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Jennifer J. Todd. 2008. "A Diagnostic Routine for the Detection of Consequential Heterogeneity of Causal Effects." Sociological Methodology 38:231–82. See also the online appendix (in pdf or Word).
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Christopher Winship. 2012. "Bringing Context and Variability Back Into Causal Analysis." Pp. 319–54 in Harold Kincaid, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Social Science. New York: Oxford University Press. (The link is to the penultimate chapter draft.)
• Muller, Christopher, Christopher Winship, and Stephen L. Morgan. 2015. "Instrumental Variables Regression." Pp. 281–304 in Henning Best and Christof Wolf, eds., The SAGE Handbook of Regression Analysis and Causal Inference. London: Sage.
• Benjamin, D. J., J. O. Berger, M. Johannesson, B. A. Nosek, E.-J. Wagenmakers, et al. (72 authors, including S. L. Morgan). 2018. "Redefine Statistical Significance." Nature Human Behaviour 2:6–10. See also the online Supplement.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Rhiannon N. Miller. 2026. "Police Radio Communications as a Measure." American Journal of Criminal Justice 51:352–86. See also the online Supplement.
• Morgan, Stephen L. Forthcoming. "Omnibus Surveys: How to Formulate Research Questions, Understand Questionnaire Content, and Code Responses for Analysis." In David Weakliem, ed., Handbook on Data Modelling and Data Analysis. Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Labor Markets, Wealth, and Stratification

• Morgan, Stephen L. and Mark W. McKerrow. 2004. "Social Class, Rent Destruction, and the Earnings of Black and White Men, 1982–2000." Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 21:215–51. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2006. "Past Themes and Future Prospects for Research on Social and Economic Mobility." Pp. 3–20 in Morgan, Stephen L., David B. Grusky, and Gary S. Fields, eds., Mobility and Inequality. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Youngjoo Cha. 2007. "Rent and the Evolution of Inequality in Late Industrial United States." American Behavioral Scientist 50:677–701. See also the online Supplementary Appendix.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and John C. Scott. 2007. "Intergenerational Transfers and the Prospects for Increasing Wealth Inequality." Social Science Research 36:1105–34. See also the online Appendix A and Appendix S.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and Zun Tang. 2007. "Social Class and Workers' Rent, 1983–2001." Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 25:273–93. See also the online Appendix B and Appendix S.
• Cha, Youngjoo and Stephen L. Morgan. 2010. "Structural Earnings Losses and Between-Industry Mobility of Displaced Workers, 2003–2008." Social Science Research 39:1137–52. See also the online Appendix.

International Development

• Morgan, Stephen L. and William R. Morgan. 1998. "Education and Earnings in Nigeria, 1974–1992." Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 16:3–26.
• Morgan, Stephen L. and William R. Morgan. 2004. "Educational Pathways into the Evolving Labour Market of West Africa." Research in Sociology of Education 14:225–45.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2009. "Education, Social Mobility and Development." Pp. 85–107 in Salisu Abdullahi, Ismaila Z. Mohammed, and Conerly Casey, eds., Studies in Cultural Sociology. Ibadan, Nigeria: Foludex Press.
• Morgan, Stephen L., Ismaila Z. Mohammed, and Salisu Abdullahi. 2010. "Patron-Client Relationships and Low Education Among Youth in Kano, Nigeria." African Studies Review 53:79–103. See also the online Appendix.

Opinion Pieces

• Morgan, Stephen L. 2019. "How Democrats Can Win Back Obama-Trump Voters in 2020." Bloomberg Opinion, June 11, 2019. The manuscript with the referenced findings is posted at SocArXiv; the final version was published as an article in Socius, and it differs only slightly from the SocArXiv version referenced in the op-ed.

Book Reviews and Other Minor Pieces

• Morgan, Stephen L. 2002. "Invited review of Sociological Methodology 2000." Sociological Methods and Research 30:467–71.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2004. "Invited review of Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference, by Judea Pearl." Sociological Methods and Research 32:411–16.
• Kalleberg, Arne L., Stephen L. Morgan, and John F. Myles. 2004. "Aage B. Sørensen: 1941–2001." Pp. 1–9 in Arne L. Kalleberg, Stephen L. Morgan, John F. Myles, and Rachel A. Rosenfeld, eds., Inequality: Structures, Dynamics and Mechanisms: Essays in Honor of Aage B. Sørensen. Published as Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Volume 21. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2007. "Expectations and Aspirations." In George Ritzer, ed., The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2008. "A New Social Psychological Model of Educational Attainment." Pp. 542–49 in David B. Grusky, ed., Social Stratification: Class, Race, and Gender in Sociological Perspective. Third Edition. Westview Press.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2008. "Stratification." In Steven Durlauf and Lawrence Blume, eds., The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2010. "Invited review of A Quantitative Tour of the Social Sciences, edited by Andrew Gelman and Jeronimo Cortina." Contemporary Sociology 39:164–66.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2010. "Invited review of Redesigning Social Inquiry: Fuzzy Sets and Beyond, by Charles C. Ragin." Social Forces 88:1934–36.
• Morgan, Stephen L. 2013. "Chapter 1, Introduction." Pp. 1–5 in Stephen L. Morgan, ed., Handbook of Causal Analysis for Social Research. New York: Springer.
• Bills, David B., Stefanie DeLuca, and Stephen L. Morgan. 2013. "Altered States of the Collective Mind: A Response to Brint." Sociology of Education 86:286–88.