Dalton Conley

Dalton Conley is the Henry Putnam University Professor in Sociology at Princeton University, with faculty affiliations at the Office of Population Research and the Center for Health and Wellbeing. He serves as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and holds a pro bono position as Dean of Health Sciences at the University of the People, a tuition-free online college.

Conley earned his M.P.A. in Public Policy (1992) and Ph.D. in Sociology (1996) from Columbia University, followed by a Ph.D. in Biology from NYU in 2014. His educational trajectory reflects his interdisciplinary approach that bridges sociology and biology.

His research primarily focuses on the intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic and health status, with particular attention to parental wealth's role in explaining racial attainment gaps, birthweight effects on later outcomes, sibling differences, and genetics as a driver of social mobility. His work represents a pioneering integration of social science with genomic data, developing methods to incorporate polygenic indices into traditional sociological models of mobility.

Conley's publications reveal a clear evolution from traditional sociological studies of inequality to increasingly sophisticated integration of genetic data with social science methodologies. His early work examined wealth disparities and racial inequality, while his more recent research pioneers the use of genetic markers to better understand gene-environment interactions in social mobility processes. His publications span behavioral genetics, sociology, economics, and public health, reflecting his interdisciplinary approach.

• Guggenheim Fellowship
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellowship
• Russell Sage Foundation Fellowship
• NSF CAREER Award
• Alan T. Waterman Award (first sociologist to receive this honor)
• Elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Elected member of the National Academy of Sciences

Conley's research has been supported by numerous grants from major foundations and federal agencies. His work bridges multiple disciplines, connecting sociology with genetics, economics, and public health. He has been instrumental in bringing genomic data into social science research, developing methods to control for genetic factors when studying social mobility and inequality. His laboratory work focuses on integrating genomic data with large social surveys to better understand the complex interplay between genetic and environmental factors in shaping life outcomes.

Conley also maintains active collaborations with the New York Genome Center and contributes to the development of methodologies for studying gene-environment interactions in large population datasets. His work has established new frameworks for understanding how social structures interact with biological processes to shape human outcomes across the life course.