Xiaogang Wu is the Yufeng (御风) Global Professor of Social Science and the Director of the Center for Applied Social and Economic Research (CASER) at NYU Shanghai. Wu also holds an appointment as Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Science at NYU. Wu joined NYU Shanghai from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) where he was Chair Professor of Social Science and Public Policy. From 2020 to 2024, he holds a visiting appointment as a Global Scholar at Princeton University.

Wu received a BA from Renmin University of China, an MA from Peking University, and a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles. He was the Mellon Post-doctoral Fellow at the Population Studies Center and a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at University of Michigan, Ann Abor from 2001 to 2003. He joined HKUST afterward as an Assistant Professor of Social Science, rising to full professor in 2011. Wu was the recipient of the US National Academy of Education/Spencer Post-doctoral Research Fellowship for 2006 to 2007, the Asia and Asian American Early Career Award from the American Sociological Association in 2007, and the Prestigious Fellowship in Humanities and Social Sciences by the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong in 2012. 

Wu is currently the President of the International Chinese Sociological Association and the founding editor of the Chinese Sociological Review.

Select Publications

• Wu, Xiaogang 2019. “Inequality and Social Stratification in Post-socialist China.” Annual Review of Sociology 45: 363-382
• Hu, Anning and Xiaogang Wu 2019. “Science or Liberal Arts? Family Background, Cultural Capital, and College Major Choice in China” British Journal of Sociology 70 (1):190-213
• Miao, Jia, Xiaogang Wu, Xiulin Sun. 2019. “Neighborhood, social cohesion, and the Elderly’s depression in Shanghai” Social Science & Medicine 229:134-143
• He, Guangye, Xiaogang Wu. 2017. “Marketization, Occupational Segregation, and Gender Earnings Inequality in Urban China.” Social Science Research 65:99-111
• Zhang, Zhuoni and Xiaogang Wu. 2017. “Occupational Segregation and Earnings Inequality: Rural Migrants and Local Workers in Urban China.” Social Science Research 61:57-74
• Wu, Xiaogang and Xi Song. 2014. “Ethnic Stratification amid China’s Economic Transition: Evidence from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.” Social Science Research 44:158-172
• Wu, Xiaogang and Donald Treiman. 2007. “Inequality and Equality under Chinese Socialism: The Hukou System and Intergenerational Occupational Mobility”, American Journal of Sociology 113(2):415-445
• Wu, Xiaogang. 2006. “Communist Cadres and Market Opportunities: Entry to Self-Employment in China, 1978-1996”, Social Forces 85(1):389-411
• Yu, Xie and Xiaogang Wu. 2005. “Market Premium, Social Process, and Statisticism” American Sociological Review 70: 865-870
• Wu, Xiaogang and Donald Treiman. 2004. “The Household Registration System and Social Stratification in China, 1955-1996.” Demography 41(2):363-384
• Wu, Xiaogang and Yu Xie 2003, “Does the Market Pay Off? Earnings Inequality and Returns to Education in Urban China.” American Sociological Review 68:425-422
• Wu, Xiaogang. 2002, “Work Units and Income Inequality: The Effect of Market Transition in Urban China.” Social Forces 80(3):1069 -1099

Education

• PhD, Sociology
  University of California, Los Angeles
• MA, Sociology
  Peking University
• BA, Sociology
  Renmin University of China

Research Interests