You have reached the home page of Aaron Gullickson. I am currently an assistant professor in the Sociology Department at the University of Oregon.

My academic interests are in stratification and inequality, race and ethnicity, historical demography, kinship, quantitative methods, and demographic methods. I am particularly interested in the nexus of inequality, race, ethnicity, and kinship. I am currently engaged in a long-term research project examining the evolution of the one-drop rule and the stratification of mixed-race individuals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

Recent Publications

"Comment: An Endorsement of Exchange Theory in Mate Selection." American Journal of Sociology (Forthcoming, expected September 2008).

"Education and Black/White Interracial Marriage." Demography 43(4): 673-689. (2006).

"Black/White Interracial Marriage Trends, 1850-2000." Journal of Family History 31(3): 1-24. (2006)

"The Significance of Color Declines: A Re-Analysis of Skin Tone Differentials in Post-Civil Rights America." Social Forces 84(1):157-180. (2005)

"Kinship Structures and Survival: Maternal Mortality on the Croatian-Bosnian Border, 1750-1898." Population Studies 58(2):145-159. (2004 w/Eugene Hammel)

"Maternal Mortality as an Indicator of the Standard of Living in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Slavonia" in Robert C. Allen, Tommy Bengtsson, and Martin Dribe, Living Standards in the Past: New Perspectives on Well-Being in Asia and Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 277-306. (2005 w/Eugene Hammel)

Working Papers

The Determinants of Black/Mulatto Occupational Differentiation at the Dawn of Jim Crow

(UPDATED 7/3/2008) Much of the literature within sociology regarding mixed-race populations focuses on contemporary issues and dynamics, often overlooking a larger historical literature. This article provides a historical perspective on these issues by exploiting regional variation in the United States in the degree of occupational differentiation between blacks and mulattoes in the 1880 Census, during a transitionary period from slavery to freedom. The analysis reveals that the role of the mixed-race category as either a ``buffer class'' or a status threat depended upon the class composition of the white population. Black/mulatto occupational differentiation was greatest in areas where whites had a high level of occupational prestige and thus little to fear from an elevated mulatto group. Furthermore, the effect of black/mulatto occupational differentiation on lynching varied by the occupational status of whites. In areas where whites were of relatively low status, black/mulatto differentiation increased the risk of lynching, while in areas where whites were of relatively high status, black/mulatto differentiation decreased the risk of lynching.

Teaching