Monica Fisher

PhD Agricultural Economics, Purdue University
MS Agricultural Economics, Oregon State University
BA Geography, University of Washington

Monica Fisher’s research in agricultural economics has taken her to forests in Malawi and to farming villages in Senegal. She has explored the impact of market reforms on small farm households in Benin, and the welfare effects of adopting new farm techniques in Senegal. Most recently, she spent more than a year in a remote village in Malawi interviewing residents of farm families and gathering data for her PhD dissertation, which explored the links between rural poverty and tropical deforestation. Fisher’s dissertation received Honorable Mention for the American Agricultural Economics Association’s Outstanding PhD Dissertation Award in 2003.

Fisher received the RPRC Postdoctoral Fellowship during 2003 - 2004 and 2004 - 2005. During her postdoctoral fellowship, she has shifted her focus from rural poverty and natural resources in Africa to rural poverty in the United States. In a study of rural-urban differences in poverty and hardship, Fisher and RPRC co-director Bruce Weber find that central county and remote rural residents have very different types and levels of assets to cushion economic shocks. Their results are reported in the Review of Regional Studies (Fall 2004). In a second study, Fisher reports results suggesting that the higher risk of being poor in rural compared with urban America partly reflects that people who choose rural residence have unmeasured attributes related to human impoverishment. Her findings will appear in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics (July 2005).

In Fall 2005, Fisher will begin a tenure-track position in the Geography Department at the University of South Carolina. She will be teaching Quantitative Methods and Environmental Economics, and she plans to continue her research on rural poverty in the United States and in Africa.

Jessica Ziembroski

PhD, MA Sociology, University of Notre Dame
MSW University of Michigan
BA Government/Spanish, University of Notre Dame

Jessica Ziembroski’s interest in rural poverty evolved from a line of research that began with her work examining the effect of women’s employment on their children’s development, to her clinical work in the mental health field, to her most recent research examining the link between social support, socioeconomic status and retirement for American women. Her dissertation expanded the latter focus to investigate the interplay between socioeconomic status, depression, disability, and health among retirement-age women. Ziembroski’s postdoctoral research, during 2003 - 2004, expands this interest to examine the relation between poverty, place, and health. Initial results suggest distinct variation by rural region in the cumulative risks and benefits affecting health. She is exploring how social support and socioeconomic status combine to affect the health of rural compared with urban women. In particular, she is interested in the role that social relationships play in this process.

While at the Rural Poverty Research Center, Ziembroski will be working on the Sentinel Communities Project and other collaborative projects that investigate community capacity and how characteristics of rural places affect health of older individuals and children. Ziembroski and RUPRI Research Analyst Erica Hauck are reviewing potential methodologies for selecting communities and tracking indicators in previous community tracking and urban poverty studies. Ziembroski brings to the position considerable experience with a large body of data sets, including the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, the Health and Retirement Study, and the National Longitudinal Study of Youth. Her expertise with data is coupled with a frontline perspective on the lives and struggles of the urban poor, from running an afternoon program for children to working with chronically ill elderly persons.