Emma Zang

Emma Zang is an associate professor of sociology (with tenure) at Yale University, with secondary appointments in biostatistics and global affairs. She directs the Computational Aging, Family, and Evidence Lab (Z-CAFE) and serves as the founding faculty organizer of the Yale Population Studies Speaker Series, which brings together scholars working on population and health research. Zang completed her Ph.D. in public policy in 2019 and her M.A. in economics in 2017, both from Duke University. 

Zang’s research focuses on how inequality is shaped, with a particular emphasis on health disparities, by examining determinants at the micro, meso, and macro levels. She investigates intra-household dynamics, organizational policies, and state- and national-level policies to understand their roles in producing and mitigating inequality. Additionally, she adopts a population-level and life-course approach to health and aging, generating nationally representative insights and tracing the cumulative effects of experiences across the lifespan.

Zang develops and evaluates statistical methods to study health disparities from a life-course perspective, with a focus on Bayesian approaches for modeling trajectories, integrating data sources, and constructing multi-state life tables. Her work also advances causal inference by refining classic demographic and sociological methods, enhancing their applicability to complex social and health research.
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Zang’s work has appeared in top general science journals (PNAS, Nature Human Behaviour), sociology journals (American Journal of Sociology, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Journal of Marriage and Family), demography journals (Demography,  Population and Development Review), quantitative methodology journals (Psychological Methods, Sociological Methodology), population health journals (Social Science & Medicine, International Journal of Epidemiology), and medical journals (JAMA Internal Medicine, Obesity, Age and Ageing). Her projects have been funded by the National Institute on Aging, the Alzheimer’s Association and the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center, the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. 

Zang’s research has received media coverage from over 500 outlets in the United States, China, South Korea, India, and Singapore, including the New York Times Magazine, CNN, NBC, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Harvard Business Review, ThePaper.cn (China), and the Straits Times (Singapore). She has been interviewed for her expertise on flexible work arrangements and population policies in the United States and China by the BBC, NBC, China Global Television Network, and MoneyToday (South Korea).

Zang is a Butler-Williams Scholar and an IMPACT Faculty Scholar of the US National Institute on Aging, and a Next Generation Leader of the Committee of 100 (the leading organization of prominent Chinese Americans). She has received the Erasmus Mundus Scholarship from the European Commission, the Chinese Government Award for Outstanding Self-Financed Students Abroad from the China Scholarship Council, and the Early Career Faculty Scholarship from the OAIC National Coordinating Center of the US National Institute on Aging. Her work has received multiple academic awards from the American Sociological Association, the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Social Stratification and Mobility, IPUMS USA, the Southern Demographic Association, and the Social Science History Association.