I am a Sociology PhD student at New York University and NYU-Shanghai’s Center for Applied Social and Economic Research. Before my PhD work, I have spent time in clinical social work along with education policy research and evaluation. On this site, you can find links to my work on social stratification and population, especially in China, with special attention to healthy child development and education, along with the environmental hazards that threaten them. Feel free to reach out via my information in the sidebar.

Ongoing research

• Higher education expansion and fertility desire in China
  Laghi, M. M.
  Data: China Family Panel Studies

• China’s contribution to the global social science literature on environmental hazards and children: A review and critique
  Laghi, M. M., & Hannum, E.
  Data: Social Science Citation Index from Web of Science

• Rising Temperatures, Rising Risks: A Three-Decade Analysis of Children’s Heat Exposure in China (1990-2020)]
  Feng, K., Laghi, M. M., Behrman, J. R., Hannum, E., Wang, F.
  Data: China County Population Census; ECMWF Reanalysis v5 (ERA5)
  Link to working paper

Chapters

• Laghi, M. M., Shen, W., & Hannum, E. Educational inequality in China: Progress, continuing challenges, and emerging issues. Chapter in Gustafsson, B., & Yang, X. (Eds) Handbook on Inequality in China. Edward Elgar Publishing. (Accepted)

Posters

• Disparate timings, disparate impacts of care work licensure: Implications from social work. Laghi, M. M.
  Data: National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG)
  Conference: Population Association of America (2025)
  Link to poster

Courses

• Summer Institute in Computational Social Science
  Teaching Assistant for Zixi Chen, Jia Miao, and Yongjun Zhang
  NYU-Shanghai, Center for Applied Social and Economic Research
  Summer 2025

• The Family
  Teaching Assistant with Recitation Sessions for Lawrence Wu
  New York University, Sociology
  Fall 2024

• Introduction to Computational Social Science and Generative AI
  Teaching Assistant with Lab Sessions for Yongjun Zhang
  NYU-Shanghai, Center for Applied Social and Economic Research
  Summer 2023 (Online); Summer 2024 (Online); Summer 2025 (In-person)