Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
wrigleyfield.bsky.social
Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
@wrigleyfield.bsky.social
Sociologist/demographer specializing in mortality, racial inequity, Covid-19. Avid theater-goer, inconsistent powerlifter, and erstwhile operator of an all-volunteer bookstore. Toddler parent. Living not-quite-car-free in Minneapolis. she/her
Pinned
The biggest project I've worked on for the last chunk of years was just published. It asks, how big are US Black-white lifespan differences?

This might seem like a narrow question. I hope to convince you by the end that there are answers you didn't anticipate. And I hope some of them will move you.
Three Ways of Looking at Black–White Mortality Differences in the United States | Annual Reviews
Everyone agrees that US Black deaths happen earlier than white deaths on average, but it is surprisingly challenging to find the best ways to summarize, quantify, and compare this gap. This review arg...
www.annualreviews.org
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
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November 20, 2025 at 3:15 AM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
First Secretary of Defense you could defeat by painting a tunnel on the side of a boulder.
The Secretary of Defense, ladies and gentlemen
November 25, 2025 at 1:55 PM
This *strongly* accords with my impressions of the Minneapolis - St Paul metro area (both cities and also the suburbs with which I'm familiar), fwiw
👉 Our new paper uses daily mobility data to show that spatial isolation is much more common today among those living in advantaged neighborhoods than the converse.

👩🏻‍💻 Lots of massive data wrangling and careful assumptions about mobility data needed - but check it out here! doi.org/10.1177/0042...
November 24, 2025 at 6:57 PM
I’ve had a kid for over three and a half years and I still, to this day, overestimate how much work I can get done on weekends because I haven’t totally updated my priors from my pre-kid life
November 24, 2025 at 2:23 PM
The “malleability of students to what they study” seems exactly right to me but it’s so good to have empirical confirmation.

The riskiness of STEM focus feels like it doesn’t *need* to be true yet probably *is* true in most settings, whereas the political consequences probably vary across settings?
November 24, 2025 at 12:33 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
As we all wait for Callais to come down, our piece showing that Shelby County increased the racial turnout gap in most of the covered parts of the country has cleared the replication check and is incoming at JOP.

Gutting the VRA was bad, actually.
November 24, 2025 at 12:47 AM
Today she made a very demanding request for more berries and when we pointed out that a key word had been omitted, she said, “The ‘please’ is silent.”

We all agreed that was quite funny, and as a result, her request was considered and granted.
Having a 3-year-old is very hard (and we need more help helping our kid with the big feelings and are ordering books to help us etc), but our family rule that whiny requests will be entertained if they are rephrased to be “polite, funny, or in song” has really paid off in a lot more fun mealtimes
November 23, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
CORRECTION: A *third* potato has been named after Prince.
November 22, 2025 at 6:29 PM
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I spent most of the day talking with folks about how to talk about trans rights, and then we went and had conversations on doors in very light blue district. And it went...great!

Change is possible. And all of us have the power to nudge it along. Get in the work, wherever it is for you.
November 22, 2025 at 10:41 PM
One of the cutest things my 3-year-old does is tell stories (true or otherwise) from the distant past, “when I was a kid”
November 22, 2025 at 10:22 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
We took the most labor-intensive parts of traditional parenting (breastfeeding, baby wearing, cosleeping) and the most labor-intensive parts of modern western parenting (lots of intellectual stimulation, gentle discipline, the child as the center of family life) and we did BOTH.
November 22, 2025 at 9:18 PM
This really feels true to my experience and observations
Please hear me when I say that

1) these anti-medical woo birth movements have been a primary feeder into anti-vaxx eugenic movements

2) they pre-date the age of social media

3) they exist because we have not addressed medical sexism and specifically obstetric violence
Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world
November 22, 2025 at 8:53 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
I handed out neighbor-printed whistles in Flatbush tonight and it was lovely. New Yorkers in motion do not EVER stop to chat but for this, they did.

One church lady in a fancy hat gleefully took a whistle and told me she’d “blow they icy asses outta her town,” then apologized skyward for swearing.
With ICE and border patrol goons spreading out across the country, I put together a resource guide for buying, printing, and distributing whistles, based on my own experience. Now is the time to whistle up, hope this helps. dansinker.com/posts/202…
November 22, 2025 at 2:12 AM
The foundation I'm visiting has 2 outings each year, like Broadway plays plus fancy dinner

These events are for EVERYONE working here--us visitors, program staff, finance & HR, maintenance, kitchen staff, everyone--& their +1s

What would universities be like if we valued everyone working there?
November 21, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Man, I’d missed this piece on MnDOT’s summer of failure, but I like it!

(gift link)
www.startribune.com
November 20, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
listen to this king. a team with low morale is ineffective. relatedly, a team with high morale is effective. also relatedly: we are going to win
November 20, 2025 at 3:06 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
November 20, 2025 at 12:34 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
It's actually amazing how well trust in science has held up (scientists are still more trusted than every profession in the US except the military!) given the huge amount of money and effort that's been spent trying to delegitimize it.
November 20, 2025 at 2:11 AM
Let's goooooooooooo New York
Iowa City Made Its Buses Free. Traffic Cleared, and So Did the Air.
www.nytimes.com
November 19, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
I won't start ranting about it because I just get myself worked up, but quickly: I literally can not think of an investment of public funds that has a higher return than *cleaning the indoor air in schools*. It's so easy, so cheap, & has such HUGE payoff. Criminal that we basically don't do it.
November 19, 2025 at 7:05 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
Another eye opening, jaw dropping, mask grabbing episode.

Can we at least save our kids?

Pennies on the dollar for cleaner, safer air in schools, our homes.
Today on Volts: for years, I've wanted to do a podcast on indoor air quality, and I finally found the perfect guest! Dr. Lagoudas & I discuss indoor air pollutants, the policies and technologies that can control them, and the growing need to frame indoor air quality as a basic human right.
What's the deal with indoor air quality?
From CO2 monitors to better building codes, Dr. Georgia Lagoudas outlines how to clean up the spaces where we spend 90% of our lives.
www.volts.wtf
November 19, 2025 at 7:28 PM
I had a problem accessing my NYU alum account (which I've never bothered w before but deeply want since someone pointed out I can get cheap theater tickets) & it's hard not to take umbrage at their IT system starting all correspondence w a flag noting my priority is "low" EVEN THO I KNOW IT'S TRUE
November 19, 2025 at 7:27 PM
A University of Minnesota inside-baseball post:

Everyone is focused on Cunningham’s apparent failures with the hospital negotiations, but surely the biggest share of blame goes to Joan Gabel. Serious negotiation with potential partners who aren’t Fairview should’ve been going on years earlier, no?
November 19, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
Tech really wants nuclear because they're hungry for power from AI to such an extent meeting that demand has destroyed their climate goals. They're also turning to financing nuclear companies. This is, to me, concerning.
AI bigwigs want to go all-in on nuclear. They also happen to be behind nuclear companies | CNN Business
Sam Altman is the chairman of a company that promises a brighter future for humankind.
www.cnn.com
November 19, 2025 at 12:29 PM
Reposted by Elizabeth Wrigley-Field
This is true, and will steadily become a reality for more and more of us, no matter how comfortable our lives feel right now.
We are all one war, one hurricane, one military coup, one wildfire, one drought, one economic collapse away from becoming an "asylum seeker".
November 17, 2025 at 7:08 PM