The Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics is pleased to announce Manuel Schechtl, PhD, Assistant Professor in the Department of Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the 2025-2026 Visiting Fellow.
Dr. Schechtl will join the center as he works on his project, “Social Consequences of Exposure to Local Wealth Inequality,” which explores the extent to which the unequal distribution of local wealth explains disparities in social outcomes such as education, health, and upward mobility. He asks, “Can personal or parental wealth help mitigate the downstream consequences of local exposure to rising wealth inequality?”
This project has three specific aims:
- “Generate descriptive evidence regarding the association between local exposure to wealth inequality and educational attainment, health outcomes, as well as upward income mobility outcomes later in life.
- Investigate whether personal and/or parental wealth mediates the association between childhood exposure to local wealth inequality and social outcomes later in life.
- Build a public-use resource to facilitate matching local wealth inequality estimates reflecting the geographies of children in national panel survey data.”
“I see myself as an interdisciplinary scholar and I believe the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics is a unique place in that regard,” he said. “Getting to know and engaging with experts from different backgrounds all united in the study of inequality posed an opportunity I did not want to miss.”
Dr. Schechtl received his PhD in Sociology from Humboldt University Berlin. Prior to joining the University of North Carolina, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Stone Center on Socio-Economic Inequality at the CUNY Graduate Center. Learn more about him and his work on income, wealth inequality, and poverty at his website.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Manuel to the Stone Center as the next Visiting Fellow,” said Joe LaBriola, Research Assistant Professor and Fellowship Committee Chair. “Manuel’s project is a perfect fit with our center’s mission to develop new data sources to further the study of wealth inequality, and the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics is sure to benefit from having Manuel as a Visiting Fellow.”
Manuel will give a talk on his work during the fellowship. Details will be announced in the fall.
Learn more about the Stone Center’s visiting fellowship.
