Yiang Li is a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is also a Predoctoral Trainee in NIA T32 Program in the Demography and Economics of Aging at the Center on Healthy Aging Behaviors and Longitudinal Investigations (CHABLIS) and a Student Affiliate at the Stone Center for Research on Wealth Inequality and Mobility at the University of Chicago.  

As a sociologist and social demographer, Yiang studies the dynamics of social inequality—particularly health disparities—and their determinants in the social contexts—family structures and neighborhoods. His research focuses on uncovering early-life precursors and underlying mechanisms that shape, perpetuate, and reproduce health differentials and social disadvantages from one generation to the next using temporal, developmental, and place-based perspectives. Additionally, he adopts a comparative perspective to study how population processes across countries are linked to morbidity and mortality patterns.  

He applies statistical, demographic, and computational techniques to study health disparities linked to contemporary and historical population processes, with a focus on causal inference, data linkages, and large-scale analytics. He has won the competitive ASA Travel Awards alongside funding support from Coordinating Centers on Demography and Economics of Aging.