Richard Breen

I am an Official Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. Between 1997 and 2001 I was Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute, Florence, where my Chair was called ‘ Social Stratification and Inequality’. Before going to Florence I was Professor of Sociology at Queen’s University, Belfast, and, before that, I worked at the Economic and Social Research Institute in Dublin. I am a Fellow of the British Academy, a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and a member of Academia Europaea. I serve as a member of the Scientific Committee of the Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales, Juan March Institute, Madrid and on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Mannheimer Zentrum für Europäische Sozialforschung.

My research interests are social stratification and inequality, and the application of formal models in the social sciences. Below you can find links to papers on which I am currently working: please do not cite or quote them without checking with me first. There is also a list of my papers which have been published over the past 4 years, together with links to them (where possible). My earlier papers – and also books – are listed on my complete cv. Most of the papers on my cv are available from the usual electronic journal providers, but if you have problems getting them, please contact me.

CV:

Current papers

“Social Mobility in Europe”. This is a summary of the book of the same name, published by Oxford University Press in December 2004. Note that the tables for this are in a separate power point file.

“Formal Theory in the Social Sciences”. This is the text of a lecture given as part of a series on ‘Tools for the Social Sciences in the 21st Century’ to mark the inauguration of Oxford University’s new social sciences building.

“Has increased women’s educational attainment led to greater earnings inequality in the UK?” (with Leire Salazar).

“Social Mobility, Educational Equalization, and Educational Expansion in Twentieth Century Sweden” (with Jan O. Jonsson).

“Poverty Dynamics Corrected for Measurement Error”, (with Pasi Moisio), forthcoming in The Journal of Economic Inequality.

“The Persistence of the Gendered Division of Domestic Labour” (with Lynn Prince Cooke), forthcoming in European Sociological Review.

“ Explaining Cross-national Variation in Youth Unemployment: Market and Institutional Factors” forthcoming in European Sociological Review.

“Income Inequality and Macroeconomic Volatility: An Empirical Study”, (with Cecilia García-Peñalosa), forthcoming in Review of Development Economics.

“Testing the Breen-Goldthorpe model of educational decision making” (with Meir Yaish), forthcoming in Stephen L. Morgan, David B. Grusky, and Gary S. Fields (eds) Frontiers in Social and Economic Mobility, Stanford University Press.

Recently (since 2000) published papers

“Is Northern Ireland an Educational Meritocracy?” Sociology, Vol. 37, No. 4, November 2003, pp. 657-676.

“Merit, Mobility and Method: Another reply to Saunders” (with John H. Goldthorpe), The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 53, No. 4, December 2002, pp. 575-82.

"Bayesian Learning and Gender Segregation" (with Cecilia García-Peñalosa), Journal of Labor Economics, Vol. 20, No. 2, October 2002, pp. 899-922.

“Institutional Variation and the Position of Young People: A Comparative Perspective” (with Marlis Buchmann), The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science , Vol. 580, March 2002, pp. 288-305.

"Social mobility and constitutional and political preferences in Northern Ireland " The British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 52, No. 4, December 2001, pp. 621-45.

 "Class, mobility and merit: the experience of two British birth cohorts" (with John H. Goldthorpe), European Sociological Review, Vol. 17, No. 2, June 2001, pp. 81-101. Also published as “Classes sociales, mobilité et mérite: l’éxperience de deux cohortes britanniques” in R. Boudon, N. Bulle and M. Cherkaoui (eds), Ecole et société: Les paradoxes de la démocratie: Paris: puf, pages 207-240.

“ Europeanization and globalization - Politics against markets in the European Union” (with Daniel Verdier), Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 34, No. 3, April 2001, pp. 227-262.

"A Multinomial Transition Model for Analyzing Educational Careers" (with Jan O. Jonsson) American Sociological Review, Vol. 65, No. 5, October 2000, pp.754-72.

"Class Inequality and Social Mobility in Northern Ireland, 1973-1996" American Sociological Review, Vol. 65, No. 3, June 2000, pp. 392-406.

"Why is Support for Extreme Parties Underestimated by Surveys? A Latent Class Analysis" British Journal of Political Science Vol. 30, No. 2, April 2000, pp. 375-382.