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Theresa
C. Davidson
Louisiana State University
Department of Sociology
Dissertation
Abstract
Eight years after passage of
welfare reform legislation, many former welfare recipients
are working and establishing their hold on self-sufficiency.
Others, however, have not fared as well, leaving welfare without
a job, or relying solely on welfare. Theresa C. Davidson,
a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at Louisiana
State University, is exploring the outcomes of this “lost
in transition” group, as she calls them—former
recipients who are neither working nor receiving welfare—using
Louisiana welfare panel data. She is first determining which
factors characterize recipients who work only, rely only on
welfare, combine work with welfare, or who neither work nor
receive welfare. She is also determining the poverty levels,
material hardship, and income of the four groups. Qualitative
interviews with the most vulnerable group, those neither working
nor receiving welfare, will offer additional insight into
their lives. A specific focus of this work is exploring how
the welfare-to-work process operates in different geographic
contexts.
Davidson is currently the project
coordinator for the LSU Survey of Families and Households,
Louisiana State University. She received her MA in sociology
from Northern Arizona University, and holds a BA in sociology
from the University of Arizona. Her primary research interests
are in the areas of welfare reform, social stratification,
and rural labor markets, with a secondary focus on the sociology
of gender, and the digital divide. She is a coauthor with
Joachim Singelmann and Rachel Reynolds of “Welfare,
Work, and Well-Being in Metro and Nonmetro Areas,” published
in Southern Rural Sociology in 2002. She is also coauthor
of “Kerala Connections: Will the Internet Affect Science
in Developing Areas?” (with R. Sooryamoorthy and Wesley
Shrum) in The Internet in Everyday Life (Blackwell Publishing,
2002).
Helen
B. Marrow
Harvard University
Department of Sociology and Social Policy
Dissertation
Abstract
Helen Marrow,
a PhD candidate in the department of Sociology and Social
Policy at Harvard University, is analyzing the immigration
experience, from both the immigrants’ and local residents’
perspectives, in the rural South. By focusing on the rural
South, she expands immigration research to a currently underrepresented
region. She is especially interested in immigrants’
incorporation into the economic (i.e., workplace), sociocultural
(elementary schools and law enforcement), and political (local
politics) spheres in this region. Ultimately, she hopes her
research will help join separate disciplinary perspectives
on immigration; help document the problems that new immigrants
pose to existing local institutions, tax bases, and individuals
in places historically unaccustomed to dealing with immigration;
help underscore the more positive facets of new immigration
(especially in terms of interracial cooperation and coalition
building) as well as potential conflict; and help policymakers
design programs and policies that smooth the transitions involved,
both for new immigrants and the host communities.
Marrow received
an MA in sociology from Harvard University and a BA in sociology,
summa cum laude, from Princeton University, as well as a certificate
in Latin American Studies with a Spanish concentration. She
is a member and former co-leader of the Migration and Immigrant
Integration Research Workshop, Harvard University. She is
the author of “To Be or Not to Be (Hispanic or Latino):
Brazilian Racial and Ethnic Identity in the United States,”
in the journal Ethnicities (2003); and a chapter on South
American immigrants that will appear in The New Americans:
A Handbook to Immigration Since 1965, forthcoming from Harvard
University Press (2006). She has spent several summers studying
abroad in Latin America and is proficient in English, Spanish,
and Portuguese.
Jennifer
Sherman
University of California, Berkeley
Department of Sociology
Dissertation
Abstract
Jennifer Sherman,
a PhD candidate in sociology from the University of California,
Berkeley, is studying the gender dynamics of poverty by examining
the effect on family structure of the changing role of males
amid significant social and industrial restructuring and job
loss. Based on in-depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork,
she considers not only the changing breadwinner role in general,
but also as it relates to a specific way of life and industry
that is in decline, in this case the northern California timber
industry. The research, she hopes, will create a better understanding
of the ways in which men, as well as women, contribute to
demographic trends in family structure, and particularly to
the high rates of single parenting among the poor. Preliminary
results suggest that flexibility with regard to the masculine
ideal is key to whether men are able to conceive of themselves
as acceptably “manly” under these circumstances.
In addition, she finds that such an acceptable self-image
is vital to creating functional marriages and families. Her
findings can point to poverty alleviation policies that do
not undermine family stability or pressure women into families
with men whose own personal and financial problems make them
dangerous or inappropriate mates.
Sherman received her MA in
sociology from the University of California, Berkeley, and
a BA in sociology and South Asian studies from the University
of Wisconsin, Madison. She has worked as a graduate researcher
on several projects at the University of California, Berkeley,
in geography, policy, and management, and sociology. She was
the research associate and publications director for the California
Institute for Rural Studies in Davis, California. She is the
coauthor of Finding Invisible Farm Workers: The Parlier Survey
(California Institute for Rural Studies), and “Who’s
Poor in Rural America?” in Working Together for a Change,
published by the Rural Sociological Society Task Force on
Persistent Rural Poverty.
John
M. Ulimwengu
Ohio State University
Department of Agricultural, Environmental,
and Development Economics
Dissertation
Abstract
John Ulimwengu, a doctoral candidate
in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development
Economics at Ohio State University, is using an econometrically
based simulation framework to predict the effects on poverty
of various policies, particularly in rural areas. To understand
poverty, he suggests, requires a framework that addresses
both time and spatial dimensions of private and social investment.
Time matters in poverty analysis because private returns to
human capital are determined, in part, by past levels of investment.
Place matters because individuals’ geographical proximity
to public capital affects both returns to private capital
and access to direct services provided by public capital.
Ulimwengu hopes to identify categories of counties that constitute
enduring “geographical poverty traps,” defined
as counties where the returns to individual investments in
human capital are persistently the lowest. Specifically, he
is assessing the effect of changes in household attributes
(such as the stock of human capital), community attributes
(such as aggregate human capital), and government programs
(such as education, job training, and welfare) on the overall
poverty rate, particularly in persistently poor rural counties.
Ulimwengu is currently a research assistant
in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development
Economics. He has worked as an economist and analyst for the
United Nations Development Program (UNDP-DRC), assisting the
government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in elaborating
macroeconomic reforms and as an analyst in the Poverty Reduction
Program. He received an MA in economics from Ohio State University
and an MA in development economics from Williams College.
He received his BA in mathematical economics from the University
of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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