Scholars

Research Associate Seymour Spilerman is Julian C. Levi Professor of Sociology and codirector of the Center for the Study of Wealth and Inequality at Columbia University. He has taught at The Hebrew University, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Tel Aviv University, and the University of Wisconsin, among other institutions, and is the former director of research on policy analysis at the Russell Sage Foundation. A focus of his research is the structure of work careers in corporate settings, examining the ways in which educational attainment, labor market experience, race, and gender influence work career features. He is also involved in cross-national research on issues of income and wealth inequality, financial gerontology, and intergenerational transfers of resources.

Spilerman is an editor of Social Science Research and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Israel Sociology, and he has lectured and published widely in the United States and abroad. His recent publications include:

• “Household Wealth in Latin America” (with F. Torche), in J. B. Davies, ed., Personal Assets from a Global Perspective, 2008;
• “Quantitative Formulations in Sociology” (with E. Gurratana), Chapter 4 in A. Gelman, ed., Qualitative Models and Methods: A Tour of the Social Sciences, 2008;
• “Transfers from Migrants to Their Children: Evidence That Altruism and Cultural Factors Matter.” (with F.-C. Wolff and C. Attias-Donfut), Review of Income and Wealth, 2007; and
• “Parental Wealth Effects on Living Standards and Asset Holdings: Results from Chile” (with F. Torche), in E. Wolff, ed., International Perspectives on Household Wealth, 2006.

He holds an MA in mathematics from Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in operations research and sociology from Johns Hopkins University.