Peter Hepburn

Peter Hepburn is a sociologist and demographer whose research examines how changes to three core social institutions—work, criminal justice, and housing—serve to produce and perpetuate inequality. He uses a variety of quantitative methods and data sources to develop measures and models demonstrating the variability of lived experience for disadvantaged populations and the transmission of inequality across generations. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Publications:

• Graetz, Nick, Carl Gershenson, Peter Hepburn, Sonya R. Porter, Danielle H. Sandler, and Matthew Desmond. 2023. “A Comprehensive Demographic Profile of the US Evicted Population.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Hepburn, Peter, Renee Louis, and Matthew Desmond. 2023. “Beyond Gentrification: Housing Loss, Poverty, and the Geography of Displacement.” Social Forces.

• Leung, Lillian, Peter Hepburn, James Hendrickson, and Matthew Desmond. 2023. “No Safe Harbor: Eviction Filing in Public Housing.” Social Service Review 97(3):456-497.

Media Appearances/Speaking Engagements:

• “The Socioeconomic Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Panel Discussion” at the Harvard Kennedy School Stone Program in Wealth Distribution, Inequality, and Social Policy in Cambridge, MA (May 2023)

• “Protecting the Most Vulnerable: Policy Response and Eviction Filing Patterns during the COVID-19 Pandemic” at the Population Association of America Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA (April 2023)

• “Eviction in America: Understanding Eviction Prior to and During the Pandemic” invited presentation for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (January 2023)

Previous Organizations: 

• The Eviction Lab, Princeton University

Upcoming Projects:

• Nick Graetz, Peter Hepburn, Carl Gershenson, Emily Lemmerman, Danielle H. Sandler, Sonya R. Porter, and Matthew Desmond. “Excess mortality associated with COVID-19 for renters threatened with eviction.” (Under review)

• Peter Hepburn, Danny Grubbs-Donovan, Nick Graetz, Olivia Jin, and Matthew Desmond. “The Effects of Eviction on Educational Trajectories.”

• Jacob Haas and Peter Hepburn. “Eviction from Manufactured Home Parks.”

My expertise is in the sociology of inequality in the United States. I explore how new forms of data and novel approaches to quantitative analysis allow us to better understand disparities in exposure to housing instability, precarious work, and the criminal justice system. I pursue an intersectional social demography that attempts to fully understand the deeply racialized nature of all three areas.