Rate My Professor Younghwan Song

Younghwan Song serves as Professor of Economics and Chair of the Department of Economics at Union College, Schenectady, New York. He holds a B.A. in Economics (1991) and an M.A. in Economics (1993) from Seoul National University, as well as an M.Phil. (1996) and Ph.D. (2002) in Economics from Columbia University. His academic career at Union College began in 2002 as an Assistant Professor, progressing to Associate Professor in 2008 and Professor in 2015. Song has also held several prestigious visiting positions, including Visiting Associate Professor at the Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard School of Public Health (2008-09), Visiting Scientist there (2007-08), and Visiting Scholar at Harvard Initiative for Global Health (2005-06) and SUNY Albany Department of Economics (2005-06). Currently, he is a Senior Economist/Consultant at Data for Decisions (since 2007) and a Research Fellow at the IZA Institute of Labor Economics (since 2014). In 2025, he joined the Editorial Review Board of Applied Research in Quality of Life.

Song's research focuses on time use, subjective well-being, job displacement, and smoking. His scholarship has been published in leading journals including Journal of Happiness Studies, Review of Economics of the Household, Journal of Medical Economics, Journal for Labour Market Research, Survey Research Methods, International Journal of Wellbeing, Labour Economics, Industrial Relations, and others. Notable publications include “COVID-19 and Subjective Well-Being in the United States: Age Matters” (Journal of Happiness Studies, 2025), “Do Fathers Have Son Preference in the United States? Evidence from Paternal Subjective Well-Being” (with Jia Gao, Review of Economics of the Household, 2023), “Does Telework Stress Employees Out?” (with Jia Gao, Journal of Happiness Studies, 2020), “Job Displacement and Subjective Well-being” (Journal for Labour Market Research, 2018), “Rotation Group Bias in Smoking Prevalence Estimates Using TUS-CPS” (Survey Research Methods, 2017), and “Recall Bias in the Displaced Workers Survey” (Labour Economics, 2007). Song has received recognitions such as selection as one of the twenty best articles of 2008 for the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award (2009), RWJ Seed Grant ($10,000, 2009), Mini-Grant from W.E. Upjohn Institute ($5,000, 2006), and Faculty Research Fund from Union College (2005-06). He teaches courses such as Seminar in Labor, Introduction to Econometrics, and Economics of Health.