Orestes 'Pat' Hastings

I'm an Associate Professor of Sociology at Colorado State University. My research lies broadly at the intersection of inequality, economic sociology, and family demography. Most of my current work focuses on using quantitative and computational methods to understand the socioeconomic correlates of parenting and their implications for children’s lives. But my interests have been quite varied, and I've also published articles on income inequality, happiness, religion, the spiritual but not religious, gender, social capital, social psychology, survey methodology, and even physics(!). I not only study parenting but attempt to practice it as a dad to three boys, and, when possible, I enjoy running (sometimes really, really far), biking, climbing, and skiing.

Here is my CV.

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Research

“The Fall and Rise of Parental Financial Investments during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” (2024) Journal of Marriage and Family.

“What’s a Parent to do? Measuring Cultural Logics of Parenting with Computational Text Analysis.” (2024). Social Science Research 124:103074.

“The Summer Parental Investment Gap? Socioeconomic Gaps in the Seasonality of Parental Expenditures and Time with School-Age Children.” (2023). Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 87:100846.

“Linking Individual and Collective Social Capital: Operationalization, Association, and Sociodemographic Heterogeneity.” (2023). Sociological Spectrum 43(1):31-51.

“Parental Investments of Money for White, Black, and Hispanic Children in the United States.” (2022). Socius 8:1-2.

“Family Structure and Inequalities in Parents’ Financial Investments in Children.” (2021). Journal of Marriage and Family 83(3):717-736.

“Happiness in Hard Times: Does Religion Buffer the Negative Effect of Unemployment on Happiness?” (2020). Social Forces 99(2):447-473.

“A Quarter of US Parents are Unmarried – and that Changes How Much They Invest in Their Kids” (2019). The Conversation.

“Who Feels It? Income Inequality, Relative Deprivation, and Financial Satisfaction in U.S. States, 1973–2012.” (2019). Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 60:1-15.

“Buying In: Positional Competition, Schools, Income Inequality, and Housing Consumption.” (2019). Sociological Science 6:416-445.

“Income Inequality and Class Divides in Parental Investment” (2018). American Sociological Review 83(3):475-507.

“Less Equal, Less Trusting? Reexamining Longitudinal and Cross-sectional Effects of Income Inequality on Trust in U.S. States, 1973–2012” (2018). Social Science Research 74:77-95.

“Keeping up with the Joneses: How Households Fared in the Era of High Income Inequality and the Housing Price Bubble, 1999–2007” (2017). Socius 3:1-15.

“Income Inequality and Household Labor” (2017). Social Forces 96(2):481-506.

“Not a Lonely Crowd? Social Connectedness, Religious Service Attendance, and the Spiritual But Not Religious” (2016). Social Science Research 57:63-79.

  • Best Student Paper Award, ASA Sociology of Religion Section
  • Robert J. McNamara Student Paper Award, Association for the Sociology of Religion

“Reliability of the Core Items in the General Social Survey: Estimates from the Three-wave Panels, 2006-2014” (2016). Sociological Science 3:971-1002.

“Socioeconomic Variation in the Demographic Response to Economic Shocks in the United States: Evidence from the Great Recession” (2015). Demography 52(6):1893-1915.

“Recession, Religion, and Happiness, 2006–2010” (2014). In Religion and Inequality in America: Research and Theory on Religion’s Role in Stratification, Lisa A. Keister and Darren E. Sherkat (eds.). Cambridge University Press.

“Rethinking Religious Gender Differences: The Case of Elite Women” (2013). Sociology of Religion 74(4):471-495.

“Reliability and Stability Estimates for the GSS Core Items from the Three-wave Panels, 2006–2010” (2012). GSS Methodological Report #119. NORC.

“Recent Atomic Clock Comparisons at NIST” (2008). The European Physical Journal Special Topics 163:19-35.

  • with L. Lorini, N. Ashby, A. Brusch, S. Diddams, R. Drullinger, E. Eason, T. Fortier, T. Heavner, D. Hume, W. Itano, S. Jefferts, N. Newbury, T. Parker, T. Rosenband, J. Stalnaker, W. Swann, D. Wineland, and J. Bergquist