Alec Rhodes

Alec Rhodes is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Purdue University, specializing in economic sociology with a focus on inequality, financial insecurity, and institutional policy impacts. His research integrates political economy, demographic, and spatial perspectives to examine life course inequality accumulation and policy interventions.

His educational background includes:

• PhD in Sociology, 2023, Ohio State University
• MA in Sociology, 2020, Ohio State University
• BA in Sociology and Economics, 2018, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Rhodes employs advanced quantitative methods including longitudinal data analysis and causal modeling with survey and administrative datasets. His work spans labor market institutions, credit/debt dynamics, geographic disparities, and racial-ethnic poverty gaps, emphasizing how power structures shape economic outcomes across careers and communities. Current projects investigate unionization's wealth effects, debt collection's mental health consequences, and state safety net policies' interaction with credit markets.

His publication trends reveal interdisciplinary engagement with journals like Rural Sociology, Social Forces, and Nature Human Behaviour, focusing on empirical analyses of institutional mechanisms driving financial advantage and disadvantage. Key thematic clusters include labor union impacts on wealth accumulation, geographic stratification in student debt, and welfare-credit tradeoffs in low-income populations.

Scientific recognition:

• 2019-2020 Olaf Larson Graduate Student Paper Award from the Rural Sociological Society

Rhodes collaborates extensively with scholars including Rachel Dwyer, Jason Houle, and Stephanie Moulton across institutions like UW-Madison and Ohio State. His research utilizes National Longitudinal Survey of Youth data, Health and Retirement Study datasets, and proprietary credit bureau records, indicating substantial external funding support for projects examining housing wealth, racial poverty gaps, and Right to Work legislation impacts. Ongoing work addresses debt collection pressure, employment quality in later-life poverty, and mortgage debt's health implications among older homeowners.