Karl Vachuska
Biographic Data
| ID | 280074 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karl Vachuska |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karl |
| FAMILY NAME | Vachuska |
| SIGNATURE | VACHUSKA K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Wisconsin–Madison |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1686-0112 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 23 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2018 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Group Threat and the Policing of Mobility: Neighborhood Visiting Patterns and Racial Disparities in Arrest Rates
Research on group threat has identified the racial composition of neighborhoods as significant for understanding spatial variation in racial bias and discrimination. A distinct but related strand of research has found disproportionate rates of arrests of non-Whites in predominantly White neighborhoods. This past work has generally operationalized racial composition in residential terms. Here, I explore the role of the racial composition of everyd…
Socioeconomic disadvantage explains neighborhood racial inequality in opioid-related mortality
The intergenerational mobility advantage of educators’ children: Capital embedded in occupations
Neighborhood shocks and network dynamics: An instrumental variable approach to measuring triadic closure in daily mobility networks
The Enduring Equity Impacts of the Tulsa Race Massacre
The Tulsa Race Massacre was one of the worst incidents of racial violence in the history of the United States. A prosperous community before the massacre, over 1200 businesses and homes in the predominately Black Greenwood District of Tulsa were destroyed over 2 days in 1921. Systemically covered up and ignored for decades, the massacre has had widely unknown effects on individual residents. Using 1900–1940 linked census data, I examine a range o…
Can early prenatal care initiation reduce racial inequalities in birth outcomes? A causal decomposition approach
There are large and persistent racial inequalities in adverse birth outcomes in the United States. While much research presents "causal" effects of race on birth outcomes, such analyses are not counterfactually formulated and fail to inform policy in a meaningful way. Recent methodological advances in causal decomposition have developed double machine-learning-based approaches for understanding how a causal intermediate variable can potentially m…
Thousands of Famous People Are Closely Related to One Another
Wealth and power have been recognized as being unequally concentrated within specific families. While research on social mobility has been limited to defined outcomes (e.g., occupation, income, and education) in specific contexts, the rise of big data has spurred broader network analysis. Using a comprehensive genealogical database of 30 million individuals in the Western Hemisphere, we analyzed how familial background, gender, and occupational d…
The movement of class: On occupation and everyday mobility patterns in the United States
For much of the last century, class analysis has been a major area of sociology and has provided a critical lens through which scholars analyze social stratification. The attributes of certain class positions are of particular sociological interest given their impact on stratification and the possibility of greater inter- and intra-generational mobility. In this work, I explore one perspective of class analysis that has been neglected in the lite…
Neighborhoods and Racial Inequality in Assortative Mating and Fertility in the United States
While racial inequalities in assortative mating and fertility have been well documented, the role of neighborhoods has frequently been overlooked in explaining these disparities. In this study, I use restricted birth record data from the state of California with neighborhood-level socioeconomic and demographic data to explore the roles of neighborhoods and structural neighborhood inequality in mediating racial inequality in assortative mating and…
Does Racial Bias Explain the Black-White Sentencing Gap across U.S. Courts
It is widely speculated that prejudicial attitudes and implicit biases are fundamental to understanding racial disparities in criminal punishment. Yet surprisingly little research links measures of racial bias to data on criminal court decision-making. This article fills this gap by combining multiple aggregate measures of implicit and explicit racial bias with data from U.S. federal courts to examine whether racial disparities in sentencing are …
Big Data
Big data are rapidly revolutionizing the modern world and are subsequently shaping what sociologists are studying – as well as the methods employed. Big data are creating new data sets that sociologists can work with in answering age‐old questions, but the use of big data in broader societal contexts is also shifting the questions sociologists are asking about the world. The ongoing big data revolution is becoming increasingly relevant in the fie…
Mobility patterns predict increasing polarization between neighborhoods
High School Employment and Intergenerational Mobility in Education: A Causal Decomposition Approach in a Period of Widespread Teenage Work
Youth employment has long been posited to have a detrimental impact on educational outcomes and to potentially contribute to the intergenerational association of educational outcomes. The early 1980s in the United States constituted a time when high school employment was especially common, and the routes to gainful employment without a college education were especially more accessible than they are today. Leveraging rich educational data on a nat…
Racial Composition, Residential Mobility, and the Spread of Urban Violence
Beyond residential terms: Estimating racial segregation in daily environments in the United States
Much research on racial segregation focuses on segregation in a purely residential sense, measuring the spatial separation of individuals' actual residences. Subsequently, it is commonly surmised that the true extent to which racial groups are spatially separated in everyday life is well represented by these residential separation metrics. Less research has articulated the degree to which different racial groups' everyday lives are spatially sepa…
Assessing interstate racial and socioeconomic disparities in newborn screening policies in the United States
Introduction: This paper explores racial and socioeconomic disparities in newborn screening (NBS) policies across the United States. While inter-state inequality in healthcare policies is often considered a meaningful source of systemic inequity in healthcare outcomes, to the best of our knowledge, no research has explored racial and socioeconomic disparities in newborn screening policies based on state of residence. Methods: We investigate these…
Neighborhood Racial Composition and Unequal Exposure to Violent Crime in Everyday Contexts
Neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and child health: The role of neighborhood mobility networks
The Significance of Name-Based Racial Composition in Analyzing Neighborhood Disparities
Contemporary sociological research emphasizes the need to analyze inequality beyond nominal categories. Although research has grown in this regard at the individual level, little research has pursued this approach with neighborhoods. This article explores how names can serve as a measure of the perceived typicality associated with race and how names are associated with neighborhood characteristics. Analyses on data with the names of over 300 mill…
Quantifying the Disparate Racial/Ethnic Impacts of Dam Removals
Measuring the Digital Divide: A Neighborhood-Level Analysis of Racial Inequality in Internet Speed during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, internet access has been vital to ensuring individuals can work from home, attend online school and maintain contact with loved ones. While research has already shown that inequalities exist regarding who has access to the internet, less research has used actual internet speed test data to examine neighborhood inequalities in internet access, and even less research has explored trends related to this …
Neighborhood Racial and Economic Composition Predicts Incidence of Various Emergency Service Responses
Sociological research has investigated neighborhood inequality across various consequential events. Crime and violence continue to be dominant phenomena examined. Less sociological attention has been given to other types of adverse incidents involving emergency services responses. In this article, the author draws on a unique data set on medical emergencies, fires, traffic collisions, gas leaks, carbon monoxide leaks, and hazardous incidents from…
Racial Segregation in Everyday Mobility Patterns: Disentangling the Effect of Travel Time
Nascent research documents that U.S. racial segregation is not merely a residential phenomenon but is present in everyday mobility patterns. Better understanding the causes of mobility-based segregation requires disentangling the spatial macrosegregation, which constitutes an obvious confounding factor. In this work, the author analyzes big data on everyday visits between 270 million neighborhood dyads to estimate the effect of neighborhood racia…
Comparing Mobility and Spatial Pathways in the Hourly Prediction of Violent Crime
Much research has documented the contagiousness of violence. Some of this work has focused on contagiousness as operationalized by the spread across geographical space, while other work has examined the spread within social networks. While the latter body of work struggles with incomplete network data, the former constitutes a theoretical mismatch with how violence should spread. Theory instead strongly suggests that violence contagion should dif…
Property Tax Foreclosure, Spatial Effects, and Neighborhood Racial Demographic Change: Examining Data From Detroit
In recent decades, the city of Detroit has experienced the greatest population loss of any major American city. Applying Event History Analysis methodology to a large dataset containing information on all properties in Detroit between 2002 and 2013, I examine how Property Tax Foreclosure spatially perpetuated itself in Detroit, finding evidence that the number of past but recent Property Tax Foreclosures in a localized area significantly predicts…
Racial Segregation in Everyday Mobility Patterns: Disentangling the Effect of Travel Time
Nascent research documents that U.S. racial segregation is not merely a residential phenomenon but is present in everyday mobility patterns. Better understanding the causes of mobility-based segregation requires disentangling the spatial macrosegregation, which constitutes an obvious confounding factor. In this work, the author analyzes big data on everyday visits between 270 million neighborhood dyads to estimate the effect of neighborhood racia…
Neighborhood Racial and Economic Composition Predicts Incidence of Various Emergency Service Responses
Sociological research has investigated neighborhood inequality across various consequential events. Crime and violence continue to be dominant phenomena examined. Less sociological attention has been given to other types of adverse incidents involving emergency services responses. In this article, the author draws on a unique data set on medical emergencies, fires, traffic collisions, gas leaks, carbon monoxide leaks, and hazardous incidents from…
Neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and child health: The role of neighborhood mobility networks
High School Employment and Intergenerational Mobility in Education: A Causal Decomposition Approach in a Period of Widespread Teenage Work
Youth employment has long been posited to have a detrimental impact on educational outcomes and to potentially contribute to the intergenerational association of educational outcomes. The early 1980s in the United States constituted a time when high school employment was especially common, and the routes to gainful employment without a college education were especially more accessible than they are today. Leveraging rich educational data on a nat…
Neighborhood Racial Composition and Unequal Exposure to Violent Crime in Everyday Contexts
The Significance of Name-Based Racial Composition in Analyzing Neighborhood Disparities
Contemporary sociological research emphasizes the need to analyze inequality beyond nominal categories. Although research has grown in this regard at the individual level, little research has pursued this approach with neighborhoods. This article explores how names can serve as a measure of the perceived typicality associated with race and how names are associated with neighborhood characteristics. Analyses on data with the names of over 300 mill…
Quantifying the Disparate Racial/Ethnic Impacts of Dam Removals
Measuring the Digital Divide: A Neighborhood-Level Analysis of Racial Inequality in Internet Speed during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, internet access has been vital to ensuring individuals can work from home, attend online school and maintain contact with loved ones. While research has already shown that inequalities exist regarding who has access to the internet, less research has used actual internet speed test data to examine neighborhood inequalities in internet access, and even less research has explored trends related to this …
Comparing Mobility and Spatial Pathways in the Hourly Prediction of Violent Crime
Much research has documented the contagiousness of violence. Some of this work has focused on contagiousness as operationalized by the spread across geographical space, while other work has examined the spread within social networks. While the latter body of work struggles with incomplete network data, the former constitutes a theoretical mismatch with how violence should spread. Theory instead strongly suggests that violence contagion should dif…
Discourse from #TheRealUW: What Tweets Say about Racial Concerns at a Predominately White Institution
In March 2016, after a series of hate crimes victimized students of color on campus, students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison started #TheRealUW movement against racism on campus. In order to exemplify racism on campus, students of color took to social media to share personal experiences and opinions on racism, affixing “#TheRealUW” to their posts. In this article, we analyze what students of color on the social media site, Twitter, spoke …
Property Tax Foreclosure, Spatial Effects, and Neighborhood Racial Demographic Change: Examining Data From Detroit
In recent decades, the city of Detroit has experienced the greatest population loss of any major American city. Applying Event History Analysis methodology to a large dataset containing information on all properties in Detroit between 2002 and 2013, I examine how Property Tax Foreclosure spatially perpetuated itself in Detroit, finding evidence that the number of past but recent Property Tax Foreclosures in a localized area significantly predicts…
Comparing Mobility and Spatial Pathways in the Hourly Prediction of Violent Crime
Much research has documented the contagiousness of violence. Some of this work has focused on contagiousness as operationalized by the spread across geographical space, while other work has examined the spread within social networks. While the latter body of work struggles with incomplete network data, the former constitutes a theoretical mismatch with how violence should spread. Theory instead strongly suggests that violence contagion should dif…
Quantifying the Disparate Racial/Ethnic Impacts of Dam Removals
Measuring the Digital Divide: A Neighborhood-Level Analysis of Racial Inequality in Internet Speed during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, internet access has been vital to ensuring individuals can work from home, attend online school and maintain contact with loved ones. While research has already shown that inequalities exist regarding who has access to the internet, less research has used actual internet speed test data to examine neighborhood inequalities in internet access, and even less research has explored trends related to this …
Neighborhood Racial and Economic Composition Predicts Incidence of Various Emergency Service Responses
Sociological research has investigated neighborhood inequality across various consequential events. Crime and violence continue to be dominant phenomena examined. Less sociological attention has been given to other types of adverse incidents involving emergency services responses. In this article, the author draws on a unique data set on medical emergencies, fires, traffic collisions, gas leaks, carbon monoxide leaks, and hazardous incidents from…
Racial Segregation in Everyday Mobility Patterns: Disentangling the Effect of Travel Time
Nascent research documents that U.S. racial segregation is not merely a residential phenomenon but is present in everyday mobility patterns. Better understanding the causes of mobility-based segregation requires disentangling the spatial macrosegregation, which constitutes an obvious confounding factor. In this work, the author analyzes big data on everyday visits between 270 million neighborhood dyads to estimate the effect of neighborhood racia…
Beyond residential terms: Estimating racial segregation in daily environments in the United States
Much research on racial segregation focuses on segregation in a purely residential sense, measuring the spatial separation of individuals' actual residences. Subsequently, it is commonly surmised that the true extent to which racial groups are spatially separated in everyday life is well represented by these residential separation metrics. Less research has articulated the degree to which different racial groups' everyday lives are spatially sepa…
Assessing interstate racial and socioeconomic disparities in newborn screening policies in the United States
Introduction: This paper explores racial and socioeconomic disparities in newborn screening (NBS) policies across the United States. While inter-state inequality in healthcare policies is often considered a meaningful source of systemic inequity in healthcare outcomes, to the best of our knowledge, no research has explored racial and socioeconomic disparities in newborn screening policies based on state of residence. Methods: We investigate these…
Neighborhood Racial Composition and Unequal Exposure to Violent Crime in Everyday Contexts
Neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and child health: The role of neighborhood mobility networks
The Significance of Name-Based Racial Composition in Analyzing Neighborhood Disparities
Contemporary sociological research emphasizes the need to analyze inequality beyond nominal categories. Although research has grown in this regard at the individual level, little research has pursued this approach with neighborhoods. This article explores how names can serve as a measure of the perceived typicality associated with race and how names are associated with neighborhood characteristics. Analyses on data with the names of over 300 mill…
Can early prenatal care initiation reduce racial inequalities in birth outcomes? A causal decomposition approach
There are large and persistent racial inequalities in adverse birth outcomes in the United States. While much research presents "causal" effects of race on birth outcomes, such analyses are not counterfactually formulated and fail to inform policy in a meaningful way. Recent methodological advances in causal decomposition have developed double machine-learning-based approaches for understanding how a causal intermediate variable can potentially m…
Thousands of Famous People Are Closely Related to One Another
Wealth and power have been recognized as being unequally concentrated within specific families. While research on social mobility has been limited to defined outcomes (e.g., occupation, income, and education) in specific contexts, the rise of big data has spurred broader network analysis. Using a comprehensive genealogical database of 30 million individuals in the Western Hemisphere, we analyzed how familial background, gender, and occupational d…
The movement of class: On occupation and everyday mobility patterns in the United States
For much of the last century, class analysis has been a major area of sociology and has provided a critical lens through which scholars analyze social stratification. The attributes of certain class positions are of particular sociological interest given their impact on stratification and the possibility of greater inter- and intra-generational mobility. In this work, I explore one perspective of class analysis that has been neglected in the lite…
Neighborhoods and Racial Inequality in Assortative Mating and Fertility in the United States
While racial inequalities in assortative mating and fertility have been well documented, the role of neighborhoods has frequently been overlooked in explaining these disparities. In this study, I use restricted birth record data from the state of California with neighborhood-level socioeconomic and demographic data to explore the roles of neighborhoods and structural neighborhood inequality in mediating racial inequality in assortative mating and…
Does Racial Bias Explain the Black-White Sentencing Gap across U.S. Courts
It is widely speculated that prejudicial attitudes and implicit biases are fundamental to understanding racial disparities in criminal punishment. Yet surprisingly little research links measures of racial bias to data on criminal court decision-making. This article fills this gap by combining multiple aggregate measures of implicit and explicit racial bias with data from U.S. federal courts to examine whether racial disparities in sentencing are …
Big Data
Big data are rapidly revolutionizing the modern world and are subsequently shaping what sociologists are studying – as well as the methods employed. Big data are creating new data sets that sociologists can work with in answering age‐old questions, but the use of big data in broader societal contexts is also shifting the questions sociologists are asking about the world. The ongoing big data revolution is becoming increasingly relevant in the fie…
Mobility patterns predict increasing polarization between neighborhoods
High School Employment and Intergenerational Mobility in Education: A Causal Decomposition Approach in a Period of Widespread Teenage Work
Youth employment has long been posited to have a detrimental impact on educational outcomes and to potentially contribute to the intergenerational association of educational outcomes. The early 1980s in the United States constituted a time when high school employment was especially common, and the routes to gainful employment without a college education were especially more accessible than they are today. Leveraging rich educational data on a nat…
Racial Composition, Residential Mobility, and the Spread of Urban Violence
Group Threat and the Policing of Mobility: Neighborhood Visiting Patterns and Racial Disparities in Arrest Rates
Research on group threat has identified the racial composition of neighborhoods as significant for understanding spatial variation in racial bias and discrimination. A distinct but related strand of research has found disproportionate rates of arrests of non-Whites in predominantly White neighborhoods. This past work has generally operationalized racial composition in residential terms. Here, I explore the role of the racial composition of everyd…
Socioeconomic disadvantage explains neighborhood racial inequality in opioid-related mortality
The intergenerational mobility advantage of educators’ children: Capital embedded in occupations
Neighborhood shocks and network dynamics: An instrumental variable approach to measuring triadic closure in daily mobility networks
Sociology (13 works) · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies (11 works) · Geography (9 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Inequality (8 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (7 works) · Demographic economics (6 works) · Demography (6 works) · Economics (6 works) · Homelessness and Social Issues (6 works)