CID Speaker Series
A (Lottery) Ticket to the Middle Class: The Changing Structure of Downside Risk Among American College Graduates
Tom VanHeuvelen
When
Tuesday, September 29, 2026
12:00–1:30 p.m.
About the event
Join the Stone Center for Inequality Dynamics as we host Tom VanHeuvelen, associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota, for “A (Lottery) Ticket to the Middle Class: The Changing Structure of Downside Risk Among American College Graduates.”
Abstract: A college degree remains perhaps the final institutionalized pathway to middle-class socioeconomic attainment, with recent college graduates attaining historically unprecedented earnings premiums. This project recovers a novel and unappreciated trend that coexists with this overall rising college premium: the rate of college graduates experiencing unambiguously negative labor-market outcomes has been growing for 25 years. Applying a relative distributional methodological approach to seven datasets spanning 75 years, the project reveals the processes leading to rising economic risk among college graduates.
About the speaker
Tom VanHeuvelen is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the long-term causes and consequences of inequality change.