Richard Williams is Associate Professor and a former Chairman of the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1986. His teaching and research interests include Methods and Statistics, Demography, and Urban Sociology.
His work has appeared in the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems, Demography, Sociology of Education, the Journal of Urban Affairs, Cityscape, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Stata Journal and Sociological Methods and Research.
American homeownership has long been characterized by racial, ethnic and geographic inequality. Inequality in home ownership, in turn, has contributed to racial and class segregation and inequality in other aspects of American life. For several years, Richard Williams has been examining the causes of this inequality in a project entitled “Racial, Economic and Institutional Disparities in Home Mortgage Lending.” In particular, he looks at how characteristics of financial institutions and government policies affect lending to low income and minority markets. With the assistance of grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Science Foundation, this research has gradually evolved from a small community service project into studies of St. Joseph County, the state of Indiana, and, most recently, the entire nation. Williams received the 2003 Rodney F. Ganey, Ph.D. Faculty Community-Based Research Award for his research.
Previous research by Williams has looked at fertility attitudes and behavioral consistency, interracial friendship in schools, married couple decision making, and methodological issues in the analysis of husband-wife data.
