Haowen studies inequality and mobility, focusing on how labor market contexts, families, and educational institutions structure social outcomes across groups and places. A primary line of research concerns geographic stratification of opportunities and long-distance spatial mobility. Her dissertation investigates links between local labor market structures, family demographic changes, and patterns of internal migration, and shows that these spatial mobility patterns lead to gender inequality in earnings. She also engages in collaborative projects on educational and housing contexts in metropolitan areas, gendered consequences of migration in comparative settings, and the health consequences of spatial mobility. Beyond this work, she has published research on gender inequality, including analyses of occupational and educational gender segregation. In addition, her work on social mobility more broadly examines education’s role in mobility processes and develops approaches to predict social mobility outcomes. At the Stone Center, Haowen works with Pablo Mitnik and Tali Krystal (University of Haifa) on a project examining workplace income distribution by social class. Across her work, Haowen uses a range of quantitative and computational methods, including regression and decomposition techniques, causal inference methods, and machine learning, and draws on survey data, administrative records, and large-scale commercial datasets.