About
I am a PhD candidate in Sociology at UC Berkeley. My research applies a relational approach to family-based inequality. Specifically, I study how the labor of some groups reproduces the status and material standing of other groups. In my dissertation, I explore this mechanism in the context of domestic work during the Great Migration. I ask how changes to the labor market for domestic workers, brought about by Black women's migration, affected marriage and fertility rates among White urban households. Through these empirical questions, I aim to contribute to the field of family demography by exploring how processes of social reproduction can shape inequality between families.

I work primarily with publicly available survey data, including full-count historical Census data. I am currently a Senior Data Science Fellow at UC Berkeley's D-Lab, where I teach workshops on data science for the social sciences.

Peer Reviewed Articles
Ashman, Hero, and Seth Neumuller. 2020. “Can Income Differences Explain the RacialWealth Gap? A Quantitative Analysis.” Review of Economic Dynamics 35:220–39. (link)

Working Papers
Ashman, Hero. "Marriage and the Racial Division of Reproductive Labor."

Bloome, Deirdre, Hero Ashman, and Leslie McCall. "Economic Self-Reliance and Gender Inequality Across Racialized/Ethnic Groups: Assessing the Family’s Role."