Andrew Penner is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where he directs the Center for Administrative Data Analysis. He is also a faculty affiliate of the Master of Public Policy program, the UC Educational Evaluation Center, the Center for Demographic and Social Analysis, and the Center for Organizational Research.

Penner’s research interests lie broadly within the field of inequality, where his work has focused on race, gender, and family inequality in education and the labor market. His work focuses on the role of categories in creating inequalities, examining how we create categories, imbue them with meaning, and sort people into them. Penner is currently involved in projects examining the role of marriage and children in creating gender wage inequality in Norway, international variation in the structure of earnings inequality, the implications of racial fluidity for inequality in the United States, and how education can create and ameliorate later life inequalities. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology and M.A. in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and his B.A. in Sociology from the University of Chicago.