THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
Geoff Wodtke’s research is in the areas of poverty and social mobility, group conflict and racial attitudes, class structure and income inequality, and methods of causal inference. He is currently working on several projects dealing with the impact of poverty on child development, class and racial disparities in exposure to environmental health hazards, and new methods for analyzing causal mediation. His previous work on these topics has been published in the American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Demography, and Sociological Methodology, among other outlets. Wodtke completed his PhD in Sociology at the University of Michigan, where he also earned his MA in statistics.
Recent Research / Recent Publications
Wodtke, Geoffrey T., and Xiang Zhou. Forthcoming. Causal Mediation Analysis. Cambridge University Press.
Priem, Betsy, Geoffrey T. Wodtke, and Kerry Ard. Forthcoming. “Racial Disparities in Childhood Exposure to Neurotoxic Air Pollution.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Balgi, Sourabh, Adel Daoud, Jose M. Pena, Geoffrey T. Wodtke, and Jesse Zhou. Forthcoming. “Deep Learning with DAGs.” Sociological Methods & Research.
Pernell, Kimberly and Geoffrey T. Wodtke. 2024. “The Distribution of Privately Held Business Assets in the United States.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 94:100933.
Schachner, Jared and Geoffrey T. Wodtke. 2023. “Environmental Inequality and Disparities in School Readiness: The Role of Neurotoxic Lead.” Child Development 94:e308-e327.
Yeh, Catherine and Geoffrey T. Wodtke. 2023. “The Effects of Head Start on Low-income Mothers.” Socius 9:1:15.
Wodtke, Geoffrey T., Ugur Yildirim, David J. Harding, and Felix Elwert. 2023. “Are Neighborhood Effects Explained by Differences in School Quality?” American Journal of Sociology 128:1472-1528.
Wodtke, Geoffrey T., Kerry Ard, Clair Bullock, Kailey White, and Betsy Priem. 2022. “Concentrated Poverty, Ambient Air Pollution, and Child Cognitive Development.” Science Advances 8:1-19.
Wodtke, Geoffrey T., Sagi Ramaj, and Jared Schachner. 2022. “Toxic Neighborhoods: The Effects of Concentrated Poverty and Environmental Lead Contamination on Early Childhood Development.” Demography 59:1275-1298.
Wodtke, Geoffrey T., Kailey White, and Xiang Zhou. “Poor Neighborhoods, Bad Schools? A High-dimensional Model of Place-based Disparities in Academic Achievement.” Stone Center Working Paper Series No. 25-14. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5375938.
Zhou, Jesse and Geoffrey T. Wodtke. 2025. “Causal Mediation Analysis with Multiple Mediators: A Simulation Approach.” https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.14019.