Speaker: Prof. Cheng Cheng, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Singapore Management University

Time: 9:30am-11:00am, 31 October 2025 (Friday, HK Time)

Venue: Zoom (ZOOM Link will be sent to registered audience after finished the e-registration.)

Registration: https://cloud.itsc.cuhk.edu.hk/mycuform/view.php?id=3805584

About the Webinar: Existing literature demonstrates that parental education, net of an individual’s own education, can directly influence personal income. Building on the linked lives principle, our study broadens this perspective to consider how individuals’ long-term income trajectories can be shaped by not only their own and parental education, but also the education of their spouse and spouse’s parents. Using multilevel dyad growth curve modeling and longitudinal dyadic data from the China Family Panel Studies 2010–2022, we examine how personal income trajectories vary with the education of the individual, their spouse, parents, and parents-in-law. We consider how the effects of education unfold over the years of marriage across different marriage cohorts. These associations are gendered, given the gender division of labor and gender asymmetry in intergenerational relations in the Chinese context of strong patriarchal and patrilocal traditions. Together, these findings underscore the gendered influence of extended family background on income mobility in China.

About the Speaker: Cheng Cheng is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Singapore Management University. Her research interests encompass gender, family, aging, and health. She studies how extended family dynamics shape gender inequalities across various domains over the life course. Cheng received her PhD in Sociology from Princeton University. Her work has appeared in Social Forces, Journal of Marriage and Family, European Sociological Review, Social Science & Medicine, Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Social Science Research, Chinese Sociological Review, among others.