Lincoln Quillian

Associate Professor of Sociology
Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research
Northwestern University
Ph.D., Sociology, Harvard University, 1997
l-quillian@northwestern.edu
Curriculum Vitae

Social demographer Lincoln Quillian is interested in social stratification, race and ethnicity, urban sociology, and quantitative research methods. Most of his research has focused on how social structure and group demography influence inequality and inter-group attitudes, with special emphasis to race and ethnicity. Along these lines, he has studied how the relative size of racial minority groups influences racial attitudes. He has investigated the patterns of migration that underlie segregation on the basis of race and income in American cities.

Recently, he has published on the correspondence between audit measures of discrimination and survey measures of prejudice (with Devah Pager), racial segregation in adolescent friendship networks, and the influence of racial stereotypes on perceptions of neighborhood crime levels. These projects have appeared as publications in a number of journals in sociology and demography. He has been awarded a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Current Research

Racial Stereotypes and Racial Inequality. This study focuses on better understanding the nature of stereotypes and their influence on racial inequality, integrating perspectives from sociology, psychology, and economics. The project employs survey measures that provide quantitative evaluations of risk of negative events to study how implicit prejudices influence the accuracy of impressions formed about members of other racial groups, and how these impressions guide judgments and result in discriminatory action.

Spatial Income Segregation and Social Outcomes. This study assesses the consequences of metropolitan income segregation for socioeconomic inequality on the basis of income and race. It uses a variety of existing data sources to estimate the losses to disadvantaged groups and the gains to advantaged groups from spatial income segregation, and to clarify the importance of different social mechanisms through which spatial segregation among income groups influences inequality.

Selected Publications

Quillian, L. 2006. New approaches to understanding racial prejudice and discrimination. Annual Review of Sociology 32: 299-328.

Pager, D., and L. Quillian. 2005. Walking the talk? What employers say versus what they do. American Sociological Review 70(3): 355-380.

Quillian, L. 2003. How long are exposures to poor neighborhoods? The long-term dynamics of entry and exit from poor neighborhoods. Population Research and Policy Review 22:221-249.

Quillian, L., and M. Campbell. 2003. beyond black and white: The present and future of multiracial friendship segregation. American Sociological Review 68:540-566.

Quillian, L. 2003. The decline of male employment in low-income black neighborhoods, 1950-1990. Social Science Research 32:220-250.

Quillian, L., and D. Pager. 2001. Black neighbors, higher crime? The role of racial stereotypes in evaluations of neighborhood crime. American Journal of Sociology 107(3): 717-67.

Quillian, L. 1999. Migration patterns and the growth of high-poverty neighborhoods, 1970-1990. American Journal of Sociology 105(1): 1-37.