Felix Elwert

Research Interest Statement:

Felix Elwert, Ph.D., is a scholar of social inequality, social demography, and applied statistics.  He develops methods of causal inference and conducts research on the contextual drivers of inequality, income, education, and health. Ever on the lookout for ways to coax causality from data, Elwert collaborates with teams around the globe to conduct large-scale randomized experiments, mine population registers, and analyze surveys.

The recipient of multiple awards from the American Sociological Association and the American Statistical Association, his work has appeared in the American Journal of Sociology, the American Review of Sociology, Sociological Science, Demography, JAMA, and other high-impact journals.

Elwert graduated from Harvard University in 2007 with degrees in sociology and statistics. He has taught applied causal inferences at Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia, in Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, and elsewhere. From 2014 to 2016, Elwert was Karl W. Deutsch Professor and Acting Director of Social Inequality and Social Policy at the WZB Berlin Social Center. Currently, he is Professor of Sociology and Biostatistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Editor-in-Chief of Sociological Methods & Research. 

Education:

M.A., Statistics, Harvard University, 2006

Ph.D., Sociology, Harvard University, 2007

Departmental Areas of Interest:

Social Stratification, Methods and Statistics, Demography and Ecology, Education, Family, Aging and the Life Course

Classes:

Soc 120 Marriage and the Family
Soc 362 Statistics for Sociologists III
Soc 952 Causal Inference
Soc 952 Graphical Causal Models
Soc 952 Causal Peer Effects
Soc 952 Causal Mediation Analysis
Soc 995 Graduate Training Seminar in Demography

Other Campus Affiliations:

Center for Demography and Ecology
Center for Demography of Health and Aging
Institute for Diversity Science

Additional Information:

Dr. Elwert wins the first Causality in Statistics Education Award from the American Statistical Association

Dr. Elwert wins the 2018 Leo Goodman Award from the American Sociological Association

Selected Publications:

Elwert, Felix, Tamás Keller, and Andreas Kotsadam. 2023. “Rearranging the Desk Chairs: A Large Randomized Field Experiment on the Effects of Close Contact on Interethnic Relations.” American Journal of Sociology 128(6):1809-1840.

Keller, Tamás, and Felix Elwert. 2023. “Feasible Peer Effects: Experimental Evidence for Deskmate Effects on Educa- tional Achievement and Inequality.” Sociological Science 7: 806- 829.

Wodtke, Geoffrey, Ugur Yildirim, David Harding, Felix Elwert. 2023. “Are Neighborhood Effects Explained by Differences in School Quality?” American Journal of Sociology 128(5):1472-1528.

Keller, Tamás, Jinho Kim, and Felix Elwert. 2023. “Peer Effects on Academic Self-concept: A Large Randomized Field Experiment.” European Sociological Review. 1–16.

Elwert, Felix, and Elan Segarra. 2022. “Instrumental Variables with Treatment-Induced Selection: Exact Bias Results.” Pp. 575-592 in Geffner, Hector et al (eds.): Probabilistic and Causal Inference: The Works of Judea Pearl.

Mallinson, David, and Felix Elwert. 2022. “Estimating sibling spillover effects with unobserved confounding using gain-scores,” Annals of Epidemiology 67:73-80.

Rohrer, Julia, Tamás Keller, and Felix Elwert. 2021. “Proximity Can Induce Diverse Friendships: A Large Randomized Classroom Experiment”. PLoS ONE 16(8): e0255097.

Carlson, Deven E., Felix Elwert, Nicholas Hillman, Alex Schmidt & Barbara L. Wolfe. 2019. “The Effects of Financial Aid Grant Offers on Postsecondary Educational Outcomes: New Experimental Evidence from the Fund for Wisconsin Scholars.” NBER Working Paper 26419.

Keele, L., Randolph T. Stevenson, and Felix Elwert. 2019. “The causal interpretation of estimated associations in regression models.” Political Science Research and Methods (8)1: 1 – 13

Elwert, F., and Fabian T. Pfeffer. 2019. “The Future Strikes Back: Using Future Treatments to Detect and Reduce Hidden Bias.” Sociological Methods & Research: 1 – 38

Wodtke, Geoffrey T., Felix Elwert, and David J. Harding. 2016. “Neighborhood Effect Heterogeneity by Family Income and Developmental Period.” American Journal of Sociology 121(4):1168–1222.

Wrigley-Field, Elizabeth, and Felix Elwert. 2016. “Mortality Crossovers from Dynamic Subpopulation Reordering.” Pp. 177-99 in Robert Schoen (ed.), Dynamic Demographic Analysis. Springer.

Elwert, Felix and Christopher Winship. 2014. “Endogenous Selection Bias: The Problem of Conditioning on a Collider Variable.” Annual Review of Sociology40(1):31–53.

O’Malley, A. James, Felix Elwert, J. Niels Rosenquist, Alan M. Zaslavsky, and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2014. “Estimating Peer Effects in Longitudinal Dyadic Data Using Instrumental Variables.” Biometrics 70(3):506–15.

Elwert, Felix. 2013. “Graphical Causal Models.” Handbook of Causal Analysis for Social Research: 245–73.

Wodtke, Geoffrey T., David J. Harding, and Felix Elwert. 2011. “Neighborhood Effects in Temporal Perspective.” American Sociological Review 76(5):713–36.

Sharkey, Patrick and Felix Elwert. 2011. “The Legacy of Disadvantage: Multigenerational Neighborhood Effects on Cognitive Ability.” American Journal of Sociology116(6):1934–81.

Elwert, Felix. 2010. “Effect Heterogeneity and Bias in Regression Models,” Heuristics, Probability: and Causality: A Tribute to Judea Pearl

Jin, Lei, Felix Elwert, Jeremy Freese, and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2010. “Preliminary Evidence Regarding the Hypothesis That the Sex Ratio at Sexual Maturity May Affect Longevity in Men.” Demography47(3):579–86.

Elwert, Felix and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2008. “Wives and Ex-Wives: A New Test for Homogamy Bias in the Widowhood Effect.” Demography 45(4):851–73.

Elwert, Felix and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2008. “The Effect of Widowhood on Mortality by the Causes of Death of Both Spouses.” American Journal of Public Health98(11):2092–98.

Elwert, Felix and Nicholas A. Christakis. 2006. “Widowhood and Race.” American Sociological Review71(1):16–41.