Nina Bandelj

About

Nina Bandelj is a sociologist, author, and professor who studies money, and how culture, power, and emotions influence the economy. She is a Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine. Growing up in Eastern Europe as it transformed rapidly after the fall of the Berlin Wall inspires her to connect people's emotions, beliefs, and struggles with transformations of social and economic systems. She has written numerous articles and chapters on how social forces impact economic lives and is an author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of seven books. Her recent publication, 'Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting,' explores how children have been turned into investment projects and parenting into exhausting work, and why this trend is problematic. Bandelj is an elected member of the honorary Sociological Research Association and has received fellowships from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, the European University Institute, and the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford. She has been recognized with awards such as the Dynamic Women Academic Achievement Award, the Senate Distinguished Mid-Career Service Award, and the Carol Connor Equity Advisor Impact Award from UC Irvine. Her leadership roles include serving as Vice President of the American Sociological Association, President of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics, and inaugural associate vice…

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Labour economics
• Social Science
• Political Science
• Economics
• Sociology
• Demographic economics
• Knowledge management
• Mathematical analysis
• Mathematics

Selected publications

• Relational Work in the Economy

  Annual Review of Sociology · 2020 · 163 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  In her groundbreaking scholarship on intimacy and economy, Viviana Zelizer coined the concept of relational work, or efforts in matching social relations with economic transactions and media of exchange. This article reviews the conceptual advances and empirical applications of relational work over the past two decades. I first trace the origins of the concept and discuss how it is distinct from the idea of embeddedness. I then identify variants of relational work proposed in economic sociology,…

  PublisherDOI

• Rising between-workplace inequalities in high-income countries

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2020 · 115 citations

  It is well documented that earnings inequalities have risen in many high-income countries. Less clear are the linkages between rising income inequality and workplace dynamics, how within- and between-workplace inequality varies across countries, and to what extent these inequalities are moderated by national labor market institutions. In order to describe changes in the initial between- and within-firm market income distribution we analyze administrative records for 2,000,000,000+ job years nest…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Within-job gender pay inequality in 15 countries

  Nature Human Behaviour · 2022 · 66 citations

  Extant research on the gender pay gap suggests that men and women who do the same work for the same employer receive similar pay, so that processes sorting people into jobs are thought to account for the vast majority of the pay gap. Data that can identify women and men who do the same work for the same employer are rare, and research informing this crucial aspect of gender differences in pay is several decades old and from a limited number of countries. Here, using recent linked employer-employ…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Investment, Saving, and Borrowing for Children: Trends by Wealth, Race, and Ethnicity, 1998–2016

  RSF The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences · 2021-07-15 · 35 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Nina Bandelj a, Angelina Grigoryeva b, Investment, Saving, and Borrowing for Children: Trends by Wealth, Race, and Ethnicity, 1998–2016, RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, Vol. 7, No. 3, Wealth Inequality and Child Development: Implications for Policy and Practice (August 2021), pp. 50-77

  PublisherDOI

• Pricing the priceless child 2.0: children as human capital investment

  Theory and Society · 2022-12-08 · 25 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  to the new millennium. Zelizer documented the transformation between the 19th and 20th century from an "economically useful" to an "emotionally priceless" child. She observed that by the 1930s, American children were practically economically worthless but invested with significant emotional value. What has happened to this emotionally priceless child at the dawn of the new millennium? Has there been a new transformation in the social value of children, and, if so, what might have such a transfor…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Parenting, Raising Children, and Rising Debt

  NSF · $154k · 2017–2021

• IBSS-Ex: Comprehending and Regulating Financial Crises

  NSF · $250k · 2013–2016

• Doctoral Dissertation Research: Striving Together? Second-Generation Americans' Path to College

  NSF · $16k · 2019–2021

Frequent coauthors

• Olivier Godechot

  11 shared

• Mirna Safi

  Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris

  11 shared

• Matthew C. Mahutga

  University of California, Riverside

  9 shared

• Andrew M. Penner

  University of California, Irvine

  8 shared

• Elizabeth Sowers

  California State University, Channel Islands

  8 shared

• Zaibu Tufail

  University of California, Irvine

  8 shared

• Frederick F. Wherry

  Stanford University

  7 shared

• Aleksandra Kanjuo-Mrčela

  7 shared

Labs

• Center for Organizational Research (COR)PI

Education

• Ph.D., Sociology

  University of California, Irvine

• M.A., Sociology

  University of California, Irvine

• B.A., Sociology

  University of California, Santa Barbara

Awards & honors

• Sociological Research Association (honorary member)
• Fellowship from the Max Planck Institute for the Study of So…
• Fellowship from the European University Institute
• Fellowship from the Center for the Advanced Study in the Beh…
• Dynamic Women Academic Achievement Award

Similar researchers at University of California, Irvine

• Carter Tribley Buttsh-48
• Edwin Amentah-37
• Stanley R. Baileyh-21