Michael Rosenfeld

Michael Rosenfeld is an award winning teacher and a social demographer who studies race, ethnicity, immigration, and family structure, especially family structure changes over time. His current research agenda focuses on alternative family forms of racial intermarriage and same sex cohabitation in the U.S., and on the reasons for rising incidence of these alternative family forms. He is currently working on an NSF-funded study of how couples meet, in other words where and when in the life course people first meet the individuals who will later become their partners and spouses (see Rosenfeld's website for links to the data). How Couples Meet used to be a central research question in American sociology 60 years ago, when most people met their future partners in the same way (by living in the same neighborhood). Now that young adults marry later and spend more of their single years away from the parental nest, it is time to figure out how patterns of young adulthood affect who meets (and who partners) with whom. This project features a nationally representative in-depth relationship study, already fielded. The project will include 1 year, 2 year, and possibly 5 year follow ups to ascertain the relationship dissolution rates for all types of couples in the US, including the hard-to-study nontraditional unions. Students: Visit Rosenfeld's own Website for class information. Curriculum Vitæ Website Email Michael Rosenfeld

 

RESEARCH AREAS

Race and Ethnicity; Immigration and Assimilation; Quantitative Methods

PUBLICATIONS

Recent Books:

• M. Rosenfeld. THE AGE OF INDEPENDENCE: Interracial Unions, Same-Sex Unions and the Changing American Family. Harvard University Press

Recent Papers:

• M. Rosenfeld. 2009. "Nontraditional Families and Childhood Progress Through School." Forthcoming in Demography.

• M. Rosenfeld. 2008. Forthcoming. "Racial, Educational, and Religious Endogamy in Comparative Historical Perspective." Social Forces, volume 87, issue 1, pages 1-32.

• M. Rosenfeld. 2008. "Intermarriage." In the Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity and Society, Edited by Richard T. Shaefer, pages 736-739. Copyright 2008 Sage press, reprinted here with permission.

• M. Rosenfeld. 2006. "Young Adulthood as a Factor in Social Change in the United States." Population and Development Review 32(1) 27-51. (Copyright 2006, Population Research Council, reprinted with permission.

• M. Rosenfeld and Byung-Soo Kim. 2005 "The Independence of Young Adults and the Rise of Interracial and Same Sex Unions" was the lead article in the American Sociological Review 70 (4):541-562. 

• M. Rosenfeld. 2005. "A Critique of Exchange Theory in Mate Selection." American Journal of Sociology 110 (5) 1284-1325. (Copyright 2005, University of Chicago Press, repinted with permission.) Additional tables, figures and addenda for the paper are available from Rosenfeld's website. This paper was the winner of the 2006 Roger V. Gould memorial prize for the best paper in the AJS in the previous year.

• M. Rosenfeld, 2002. Measures of Assimilation in the Marriage Market: Mexican Americans 1970-1990 Journal of Marriage and the Family 64: 152-162. (Copyright 2002 by the National Council on Family Relations, 3989 Central Ave. NE, Suite 550, Minneapolis, MN 55421. Reprinted with permission.

• M. Rosenfeld, 2001. The Salience of Pan- National Hispanic and Asian Identities in US Marriage Markets Demography 38: 161-175. (Copyright 2001 Population Association of America, reprinted with permission.)

• M. Rosenfeld, and M. Tienda, 1999. "Mexican Immigration, Occupational Niches and Labor Market Competition: Evidence from Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, 1970-1990" Chapter 2 in Immigration and Opportunity: Race, Ethnicity and Employment in the United States Edited by Frank D. Bean and Stephanie Bell-Rose. New York: Russell Sage.  There are two ways to get this chapter: you can buy the book from Russell Sage (search their website for publications here) or you can email me and I'll send you a PDF file.

• M. Rosenfeld, 1997. Celebration, Politics, Selective Looting and Riots: A Micro Level Study of the Bulls Riot of 1992 in Chicago. Social Problems 44 (4): 483-502.