I joined Hopkins Population Center as an Assistant Research Scientist in September 2021. I am interested in understanding social inequality and health disparities from the life course perspective. I received my PhD in Sociology from Case Western Reserve University. I obtained my Master’s degree in Gerontological Study from Miami University (Oxford, OH) and Bachelor’s degree in journalism from Xiamen University (China).  

I have broad research interests in life course studies and longitudinal research methods. My research focuses on understanding how the transition to adulthood has shifted across cohorts. In my dissertation “Leisure to Explore or Failure to Launch: A Cohort Comparison of the Transition to Adulthood between Late Baby Boomers and Early Millennials,” I explored how school-to-work and family formation processes interplay during young adulthood. The results reveal how disadvantages in both life domains intersect and accumulate over time. I also examined how precarious labor market conditions influence employment trajectories among the disadvantaged youth.

Yu, Jiao, Wenxuan Huang, and Eva Kahana. (2021). Investigating Factors of Active Aging among Chinese Older Adults: A Machine Learning Approach. The Gerontologist,  gnab058.  https://doi.org/10.1093/geront/gnab058

Rachel Lovell, Wenxuan Huang, Laura Overman, Daniel Flannery, and Joanna Klingenstein (2020). Offending Histories and Typologies of Suspected Sexual Offenders Identified Via Untested Sexual Assault Kits.Criminal Justice and Behavior,  47(4),  470–486.  https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854819896385

Dale Dannefer and Wenxuan Huang (2017). Precarity, Inequality, and the Problem of Agency in the Study of the Life Course. Innovation in Aging, 1(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/geroni/igx027

Jessica Kelley-Moore and Wenxuan Huang (2017). The“Good Times”Cohort    in Later-Life: Black–White Differences in Pathways to Functional Limitations. Research on Aging, 39(4), 526–548. https://doi.org/10.1177/0164027516655582

Dale  Dannefer,  Wenxuan   Huang,   and   Carrol   Estes   (2017).   Life Course. In The Wiley‐Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Theory, pp.1-3. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118430873.est0217

Dale Dannefer, Jessica Kelley-Moore, and Wenxuan  Huang.  (2016). Opening  the  Social:    Sociological  Imagination  in  Life  Course  Studies. In Handbook of the Life Course, pp. 87-110. New York: Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20880-04