Research

Publications

• Leveraging Genomic Data to Document Within-Race Attractiveness Penalties Among Black Americans.

  Beza Taddess, Luyin Zhang, and Sam Trejo. Equal first authorship. Sociological Science, Forthcoming.

• DNA, Self-Reported Ancestry, and Social Scientific Inquiry.

  Luyin Zhang and Sam Trejo. Demography, Forthcoming.

• Why Is Life Expectancy in England and Wales Falling Behind? A Cause-of-Death Decomposition Approach.

  Antonino Polizzi, Andrea M. Tilstra, Luyin Zhang, and Jennifer Beam Dowd. Population Studies, Forthcoming.

• Indirect Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cause-of-Death Analysis of Life Expectancy Changes in 24 Countries, 2015–2022.

  Antonino Polizzi, Luyin Zhang, Sergey Timonin, Aashish Gupta, Jennifer Beam Dowd, David A. Leon, and José Manuel Aburto. PNAS Nexus, 2025.

• US Exceptionalism? International Trends in Midlife Mortality.

  Jennifer Beam Dowd, Katarzyna Doniec, Luyin Zhang, and Andrea Tilstra. International Journal of Epidemiology, 2024.

• Life Expectancy Changes Since COVID-19.

  Jonas Schöley, José Manuel Aburtom, Ilya Kashnitsky, Maxi S. Kniffka, Luyin Zhang, Hannaliis Jaadla, Jennifer Beam Dowd, and Ridhi Kashyap. Nature Human Behaviour, 2022.

• Quantifying Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic Through Life-Expectancy Losses: A Population-Level Study of 29 Countries.

  José Manuel Aburtom, Jonas Schöley, Ilya Kashnitsky, Luyin Zhang, Charles Rahal, Trifon I. Missov, Melinda Mills, Jennifer Beam Dowd, and Ridhi Kashyap. International Journal of Epidemiology, 2021.

In Chinese

• Premarital Cohabitation in China and Its Impacts on Marriage and Fertility Trajectories.

  Luyin Zhang. Population Research, 2020.

• The Transition of Fertility Intention Propensity of Chinese Web-Users – the Application of Public Opinion Big Data Analysis.

  Ting Li, Yuan Jie, Xia Lu, Yinghong Xiong, and Luyin Zhang. Population Research, 2019.

   

Working Paper

• Uncovering the Hidden Magnitude of Within-Race Skin Tone Inequality.

  Luyin Zhang, Varsha Menon, and Sam Trejo.

• Within-Family GWAS Does Not Ameliorate the Decline in Prediction Accuracy across Populations.

  Luyin Zhang and Dalton Conley.

   

Selected Work in Progress

• Within-Race Skin Tone Disparities in Biomarkers and Biological Aging.

  Luyin Zhang

• Causal Effects of Offspring Genetic Liability for Psychopathology on Parental Health Behaviors.

  Luyin Zhang and Dalton Conley.

• Genetic Ancestry-Related Assortative Mating of U.S. Black and Hispanic Populations.

  Luyin Zhang, Sam Trejo, and Dalton Conley.

• The Gap Within the Gap: Using Continuous Measures of Racialization to Study School Racial Segregation.

  Varsha Menon, Luyin Zhang, and Sam Trejo.