About

Andrew Penner is a sociologist who studies inequality in education and the labor market. His work focuses on understanding the intended and unintended consequences of social policy.

Research topics

• Labour economics
• Economics
• Demographic economics
• Mathematics
• Mathematical analysis

Selected publications

• Categorical Inequality: Schools as Sorting Mechanisms

  UNC Libraries · 2025-09-17

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Despite their egalitarian ethos, schools are social sorting machines, creating categories that serve as the foundation of later life inequalities. In this review, we apply the theory of categorical inequality to education, focusing particularly on contemporary American schools. We discuss the range of categories that schools create, adopt, and reinforce, as well as the mechanisms through which these categories contribute to production of inequalities within schools and beyond. We argue that this categorical inequality frame helps to resolve a fundamental tension in the sociology of education and inequality, shedding light on how schools can-at once-be egalitarian institutions and agents of inequality. By applying the notion of categorical inequality to schools, we provide a set of conceptual tools that can help researchers understand, measure, and evaluate the ways in which schools structure social inequality.

  PublisherDOI

• Immigrant–native pay gap driven by lack of access to high-paying jobs

  2025-02-19

  preprint

  Immigrants to high-income countries often face considerable and persistent labor market difficulties upon arrival, while their native-born children typically experience economic progress. However, little is known about the degree to which these immigrant–native earnings differences stem from unequal pay when doing the same work for the same employer versus labor market processes that sort immigrants into lower-paid jobs. Using linked employer–employee data on 13.4 million workers from nine European and North American countries, we find that the segregation of immigrant-background workers in lower-paying jobs accounts for about four-fifths of immigrant–native earnings differences. Although within-job pay inequality remains consequential for immigrants in several countries, our results demonstrate that lack of access to higher-paying jobs is the primary driver of the immigrant–native pay gap across a range of highly diverse institutional and demographic host-country contexts. These findings highlight the importance of policies aimed at reducing between-job segregation, such as language, job training, and job search assistance programs; improving access to domestic education; recognizing foreign qualifications; and settlement programs aimed at enhancing access to job-relevant information and networks. Policies targeting employer bias in hiring and promotion decisions are also likely of high relevance, whereas measures aimed at ensuring equal pay for equal work may have more limited potential for further progress in closing the immigrant–native pay gap.

  PublisherDOI

• Immigrants in Europe and North America earn 18% less than natives – here’s why

  2025-07-16

  preprintSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Los inmigrantes en Europa y Norteamérica ganan un 18 % menos que los nativos: aquí las razones

  2025-07-16

  preprintSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Virtual charter students have worse labor market outcomes as young adults

  Social Science Research · 2025-09-16

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Virtual charter schools are increasingly popular, yet there is little research on the long-term outcomes of virtual charter students. In this research note, we link statewide education records from 9th grade students in Oregon with information on criminal legal contact and IRS records containing earnings information housed at the U.S. Census Bureau to provide evidence on how virtual charter students fare as young adults. Virtual charter students have substantially worse high school graduation rates, college enrollment rates, bachelor's degree attainment, employment rates, and earnings than observationally similar students in traditional public schools, but similar rates of contact with the criminal legal system. Although there is growing demand for virtual charter schools, our results suggest that students who enroll in virtual charters may face negative long-term consequences.

  PublisherDOI

• Pay gap between nationals and migrants mainly due to unequal access to high-paying jobs

  Nature · 2025-08-20

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Immigrant–native pay gap driven by lack of access to high-paying jobs

  Nature · 2025-07-16 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  Immigrants to high-income countries often face considerable and persistent difficulties in the labour market1–6, whereas their native-born children typically experience economic progress6–9. However, little is known about the extent to which these immigrant–native earnings differences stem from unequal pay when doing the same work for the same employer versus labour market processes that sort immigrants into lower-paid jobs. Here, using data from nine European and North American countries, we show that the segregation of workers with immigrant backgrounds into lower-paying jobs accounts for about three-quarters of overall immigrant–native earnings differences. Although within-job pay inequality remains notable for immigrants in several countries, our results demonstrate that unequal access to higher-paying jobs is the primary driver of the immigrant–native pay gap across a range of institutionally and demographically diverse contexts. These findings highlight the importance of policies aimed at reducing between-job segregation, such as language training10–13, job training13–15, job search assistance programmes13,15, improving access to domestic education13,16,17, recognizing foreign qualifications18,19, and settlement programmes aimed at enhancing access to job-relevant information and networks13,20,21. Policies that target employer bias in hiring and promotion decisions are also likely to be effective, whereas measures aimed at ensuring equal pay for equal work may have more limited scope for further progress in closing the immigrant–native pay gap22–28. Data from nine European and North American countries reveal that the disparity in earnings between immigrants and natives is largely a result of segregation of immigrant workers into lower-paying jobs.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Peer income exposure across the income distribution

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-02-12 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Children from families across the income distribution attend public schools, making schools and classrooms potential sites for interaction between more- and less-affluent children. However, limited information exists regarding the extent of economic integration in these contexts. We merge educational administrative data from Oregon with measures of family income derived from IRS records to document student exposure to economically diverse school and classroom peers. Our findings indicate that affluent children in public schools are relatively isolated from their less affluent peers, while low- and middle-income students experience relatively even peer income distributions. Students from families in the top percentile of the income distribution attend schools where 20 percent of their peers, on average, come from the top five income percentiles. A large majority of the differences in peer exposure that we observe arise from the sorting of students across schools; sorting across classrooms within schools plays a substantially smaller role.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Marching into the Leadership Pipeline: Gender, College Type, and ROTC Participation

  Socius Sociological Research for a Dynamic World · 2025-01-19 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) is the largest single source of military officers in the United States and a major pipeline for Americans to enter military leadership. Although ROTC offers fairly standardized scholarships, curricula, and career paths, the gender composition of ROTC cadets varies substantially across the 323 four-year host campuses. Nine of the 10 ROTC campuses that have the highest percentages of women among their graduating ROTC officers are at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. By contrast, the vast majority of officers graduating from ROTC at senior military colleges such as the Citadel are men.

  PublisherDOI

• Strong Gender Contract, Weak Institutions: Gender Pay Gap in Slovenia and Czechia

  Social Politics International Studies in Gender State & Society · 2025-01-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract This article investigates the dynamics of the gender pay gap (GPG) in two post-socialist economies, Czechia and Slovenia, during their capitalist transition and EU membership. Using regression analysis on large samples of linked employer–employee data to estimate the total GPG and within-job GPG and institutional analysis, we find that in both countries women earn significantly less than men for the same work. We interpret this as due to institutions, policies, and practices, including gender inequalities in the division of unpaid work and domestic care, which result in different but strong gender contracts in the two countries. The segregation of women and men into differently paid occupations, jobs, or workplaces does not explain much of the total GPG in Slovenia. In contrast, it explains about half of the total GPG in Czechia. We argue that this is due to weak labor market institutions in Czechia, recently weakening in Slovenia.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Why Are Boys Faltering in School? International and Longitudinal Perspectives

  NIH · $639k · 2012–2017

Frequent coauthors

• Trond Petersen

  124 shared

• Mirna Safi

  Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris

  111 shared

• Are Skeie Hermansen

  Stockholm University

  108 shared

• Lasse Folke Henriksen

  Copenhagen Business School

  106 shared

• Zoltán Lippényi

  106 shared

• Feng Hou

  106 shared

• Martin Hällsten

  Swedish Institute

  104 shared

• Marta M. Elvira

  Universidad de Navarra

  103 shared