Category: News and Information
Several Evans Ph.D. students were recognized at the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies Annual Awards
Several Evans PhD students were recognized at the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies Annual Awards dinner this week. Elizabeth Pelletier was honored for a Washington State Labor Research Grant looking at employment instability around the time of a birth. Ellie Terry also received a Washington State Labor Research Grant for a project that models the impact of a proposed Guaranteed Income Program in Washington State. Matt Fowle received a Graduate Student Research Grant for a collaborative project on criminal justice monetary sanctions and labor market participation, with co-author Lindsey Beach from Sociology.
Ph.D. Student Emily Finchum-Mason piece published in the Conversation
Evans PhD Student Emily Finchum-Mason recently published a piece in the Conversation discussing her research around community participation and stakeholder engagement in foundation grantmaking. The piece highlights how foundations engage (or don’t) external constituencies and points to open questions facing the field. Her analysis and translation of findings draws from a report with Evans faculty David Suarez and recent Evans PhD Kelly Husted.
Ph.D. Student Alicia Y.E. Ahn Leads Paper on Earthquake Risks and Disaster Prevention Awareness in Seattle and Sendai, Japan
In the December 2021 issue of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, Evans Ph.D. Student Alicia Ahn, Professor Ann Bostrom, and colleagues in Japan describe findings from a study of how residents of Seattle, Washington and Sendai, Japan perceive earthquake risk and whether they are willing to pay for improved earthquake warning systems. They find differences between residents in the two cities in terms of the level of fear about earthquakes, but a relationship in both places between greater fear and willingness to pay.
Evans PhD Candidate Matt Fowle and Associate Professor Rachel Fyall’s Study on Evictions During the Covid-19 Pandemic Cited in New York Times
Evans PhD Candidate Matt Fowle and Associate Professor Rachel Fyall’s Study on Evictions During the Covid-19 Pandemic Cited in New York Times.
Professor Erica Mills Barnhart featured on WalletHub
A Q&A with Ben Glasner (PhD ’21)
This past summer, Ben Glasner completed his Ph.D. at the Evans School with expertise in labor market policy and the gig economy. He took some time from his work as a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University recently to chat about his dissertation work.
Your dissertation research focused on self-employment and the gig economy – explain why this is such a critical portion of the labor market for scholars and policymakers alike?
Self-employment work arrangements, and specifically work within the gig economy, are becoming increasingly commonplace. Yet, these types of work arrangements often are excluded from labor policy or regulations intended to protect and support workers. As a result, policy tools like the minimum wage are not designed for the self-employed. Workers who are operating simultaneously under multiple firms at a single point in time (e.g., driving for Uber and Lyft simultaneously), or whose hours are prohibitively difficult to track don’t receive the same coverage as a traditional hourly payroll employee who punches a time clock.
Such exclusions are nothing new. When the minimum wage was first introduced through the Fair Labor Standards Act, a number of jobs were not covered and those exclusions meant a significant share of black and female workers were not covered by the first minimum wage laws. Such exclusions remained in place well into the 1960s and were key parts of the civil rights movement.
Today, the remnants of past exclusions persist. We have ended up with a patchwork system of supporting workers. From health care to minimum standards of living, where a person works and how that work is done has important consequences to what protections or benefits they receive. I think the gig economy is really the front line of the debate over social support and the division between efficient labor markets and fair labor markets.
How does your dissertation research extend our understanding of the impact of minimum wage laws?
My dissertation project fills key gaps in the minimum wage literature. One key gap I explored was whether higher minimum wages changed the demand for workers or jobs exempted from minimum wage laws. When minimum wages increase, I find evidence of an increase in participation in the uncovered labor market, but it is driven by urban areas with access to the online gig economy. Another part of my dissertation project examines the question of minimum wage effects on multiple jobholding. The puzzle here is that if minimum wages theoretically could both increase and lower multiple jobholding. My work, however, I found that minimum wages had no significant impact on multiple jobholding in aggregate.
What are the key policy research questions we should be asking to better understand the experiences of workers holding multiple jobs?
Today, I’d say there are two key features about multiple jobholding to explore. One, hours and schedules can be difficult to coordinate between employers, which leads to unstable scheduling. Two, because individuals are more commonly combining earnings from payroll positions with self-employment, some workers may use on-demand “employment” through the gig economy to help fill the gaps of an instable schedule. We don’t know a lot about how workers make decisions about holding multiple jobs or balancing hours across jobs. This is particularly important when we consider the different experience of multiple jobholders with high earnings and those with multiple jobs who still struggle to keep their heads above water.
When you talk to state and local policymakers about raising the minimum wage, what advice or guidance would you give them?
Primarily, I’d encourage policymakers to consider the differences between federal, state, and local minimum wage rates in a given setting. I believe minimum wage increases are a positive tool for improving work outcomes, but they are not the solution to all issues of job quality or underemployment. In fact, minimum wage laws can be rather limited tools because they miss workers who are working in the uncovered or the informal labor market. This often means the most vulnerable workers will not be reached by these policies.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to since finishing your dissertation work.
I have just started a new position as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist with the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. While there I’ll be conducting analyses of the effects of major social policies and reforms on the poverty rate and other indicators of well-being. These analyses will include long-term studies of the intergenerational transmission of poverty, but also studies of contemporary policies and their effects. All the work will be under the great team headed by Irwin Garfinkel, Jane Waldfogel, and Christopher Wimer.
A Q&A with Veda Patwardhan (PhD ’21)
Veda Patwardhan recently finished her Ph.D. at the Evans School with expertise in household economics and gender. We caught up with her during a break in her day at the Institute for HealthMetrics and Evaluation (IHME) to talk about her dissertation project.
Your dissertation research focuses on how policy interventions and contextual factors shape the roles of women within households in India and Malawi. How did this project emerge over the course of your training at the Evans School?
As a Research Assistant for the Evans Policy Analysis and Research group (EPAR) during my first year as a doctoral student at Evans, I worked on a project conceptualizing the pathways through which empowering female farmers in low and middle-income countries may yield economic benefits. Thinking about the theory behind why gender differences AND inequalities have real consequences for individuals and families piqued a long-term research interest in this area. As that work progressed, I knew I wanted to focus on the intersection of public policy and gender inequality.
I also was motivated by the fact that women’s economic empowerment is an important policy objective internationally. Multi-lateral organizations, foundations, and several governments worldwide are making substantial commitments to gender equality and women’s economic empowerment. Many low and middle-income countries have implemented female-centric social protection and financial inclusion programs. For example, cash transfer schemes, self-help groups, microcredit, bank account provision and public works programs often explicitly target female beneficiaries.
Early in your dissertation, you powerfully note that “control over income is a crucial aspect of women’s economic empowerment.” What were some of the most important insights you discovered about factors shaping how women have control over household income and what having that power means for them and their families?
There are many important findings in my work. One that stands out relates to how the source of household income matters for women’ control over income (WCI). My work in Malawi finds that women have higher sole decision-making for income from public transfer sources like cash and food transfers, as well as remittances, compared with salaries, wages, and farm income. This is very interesting, as research on women’s economic empowerment hasn’t so far considered how the source of household income can really matter for who controls it! My findings in Malawi show women have higher control over transfers than other income sources, even when men are present in the household, suggesting that targeting transfers to women may yield benefits. This also helps unpack why maternal cash transfers like the Mamata Scheme in India (which I examine in another one of my dissertation chapters) have positive effects on children’s health.
This project analyzes data from two quite different settings. How might insights from your dissertation work shape your approach to comparative policy research in the future?
This is a great question. I think that conducting comparative policy research is important for the international development field, as generalizing across regions is difficult and may not always be desirable or accurate. The underlying theme of my work in India and Malawi is similar, but in India, I analyze the effect of a maternal cash transfer program on child outcomes, while my work in Malawi looks at the household and contextual drivers of women’s control over income. Over the course of my dissertation writing, I also realized that analyzing different types of research questions in these two geographies helped solidify my understanding of the existing literature, theoretical perspectives, and research gaps on women’s control over income. I look forward to conducting cross-country analyses in my future research.
What would you say are the biggest takeaways from your work for policymakers and nongovernmental organizations working to empower women in different contexts around the globe?
Policy design is incredibly important. For instance, while examining the impact of a maternal cash transfer scheme in India on child nutrition, I find that children in the poorest households benefit significantly less than those in wealthier households. This suggests that marginalized populations may face obstacles to participation and suggests changes in policy design. For example, policymakers may wish to modify eligibility criteria, or behavioral requirements — such as receiving prenatal care – that could hinder access for marginalized groups.
Paying attention to what drives women’s empowerment is important as well. In Malawi, I find that women’s decision-making over farm income increases following drought. However, this may not reflect an improvement in women’s well-being, if women have a higher workload on the farm and at home. Female farmers tend to have less access to information on climate change and climate-smart-agricultural practices, leading to lower adoption rates compared to men. So, we need policy to recognize the role climatic factors play in women’s farm decision-making. Interventions to improve women’s land tenure security, access to agricultural inputs, and safety nets like cash transfers can play an important role here.
Tell us a little about what’s next for you.
I am excited to start a Postdoctoral Scholar position with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), which is a global health research center based at the University of Washington. My work will focus on examining gender inequalities in health.
Dean Jodi Sandfort elected to NASPAA’s Executive Council to serve a three-year term
The Evans School is pleased to announce that Dean Jodi Sandfort was elected today to NASPAA’s Executive Council to serve a three-year term, 2021-2024.
NASPAA’s Executive Council is the network’s national governing body and is responsible for overseeing the planning, organizing, and supervising all activities, including applications for membership, committees, and policies.
“I am honored to be joining NASPAA’s Executive Council this fall and hope that during my three-year term I am able to move the needle for Public Policy and Public Affairs Schools. NASPAA’s Diversity and Social Equity Committee has developed an ambitious and long overdue agenda for curricular transformation, and I look forward to supporting those efforts across our profession.
The Network is also engaged in serious conversations about doctoral and under-graduate education, so I look forward to bringing the Evans School’s expertise into those discussions as well.” – Dean Sandfort The Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs and Administration is the international associate focused upon ensuring excellence in education and training for public service. It oversees the international accrediting body for master’s degrees in the field, provides advocacy with governments about the needs of public affairs education, encourages curriculum development and innovation, operates a student honor society, and oversees a data center that is the fields’ authoritative source.
An Equitable Future in Early Childhood Education Leadership: A Q&A with Leslie Dozono (MPA ’07) and Nubia Lopez (MPA ’07)
Driven by a passion for growing the number of BIPOC leaders in early childhood education and advancing anti-racism policy and practice, Evans School alumni Leslie Dozono (MPA ’07) and Nubia Lopez (MPA ’07) are working for a more just and equitable future in early childhood education leadership. We asked them about their work with the Washington Childhood Policy Fellowship and how their Evans School experience shaped where they are today.
What contributed to your decision to pursue a career in support of the public good? Was there a defining moment in particular?
Nubia: As an undergraduate I majored in political science, and I worked closely with a professor who taught courses that opened my eyes to the politics and systems that I hadn’t really considered until then. Initially I was extremely interested in international politics, but then started working in a kindergarten classroom as a paraeducator. Through this job and my formal education, I started seeing the world through a different lens, one where I understood that our social systems are designed and intentional, and that happens through policy. When I came to the Evans School I chose to focus on social and education policy. I wanted to be more than just critical of our social systems and structures, I wanted to dedicate my career towards creating more equitable systems and structures—systems that work for everyone, not just those with privilege and access.
Leslie: I’ve always worked with kids and education so nonprofit/public work has been a natural path for my professional life. I was an English major in undergraduate and afterwards I worked at a nonprofit that had a focus on literacy. I think a significant professional turning point for me was the shift from direct service to policy. When I moved to Seattle, I was lucky to work with an amazing team of people at Atlantic Street Center where we offered youth development, counseling and case management, and family services. My experiences at our Summer Academy program, particularly with kindergartners, served as a catalyst for my commitment to early childhood as a field and my realization that I wanted to move from direct service to policy. There were so many things happening for the children and families we served—ongoing challenges for their overall success – that were systemic and much larger than what I could see on the ground. Looking upstream both in terms of age and in terms of policy made a lot of sense to me when I thought about the impact I wanted to have.
Can you share a bit about the work you are currently doing and what a typical day in your work looks like?
We’re working to establish a new nonprofit in Washington state, the Washington Early Childhood Policy Fellowship. The focus is on two things: Increasing the number of Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC) leaders in early childhood policy in Washington state and advancing anti-racism policy and practice in the larger early childhood policy system. We recognize that cultivating and supporting individual BIPOC leadership is important for progress in addressing persistent disparate racialized outcomes for young children, but at the same time, the broader field needs to be aligned and committed to understanding and centering anti-racism in policy to achieve transformational change.
We’re very much in the start-up phase of building an organization, which means we have a lot to think about! Our focus is split between leadership/governance, program design, and fund development. We are currently fiscally sponsored through the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition (SESEC), and we’ve been establishing our Founding Board and the internal structural components required to establish as an independent 501(c)3. That means developing our mission, bylaws, our Board structure, and relationships, all the while thinking about our long-term governing board and readying to launch a search for our inaugural Executive Director. Concurrently, we’re working on building the programmatic components of a placement-based Fellowship that combines employment with significant professional development and mentorship. Relationship-intensive work takes significant resources, so we are also deep in fund development, making sure we have the investments we need to launch and sustain this work.
You have both been champions of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion throughout your careers. Can you share why this has been so central to you and the work you continue doing?
Nubia: This work is personal for me. It is about my own lived experience and background. My family immigrated to the US from Mexico when I was 3 years old, and my parents didn’t speak English and I didn’t learn English until I started elementary school. We were a low-income family, relying on social services. I saw my parents constantly struggle to make ends meet, even though both of my parents worked multiple jobs. It took me some time to realize that struggles were not personal failings of my family or my community, but predictable outcomes based on our lack of access to resources and opportunities—this is central to equity work. For me, equity is about providing access and resources so that everyone can thrive
Going from my personal experience to our work with the Fellowship, our work is about having diverse voices at the decision-making tables. How can we ensure that BIPOC leaders who have these lived experiences are provided with opportunities to influence decisions that impact young children and families? And, beyond that, how can we support and build their capacity to have an impact on early childhood policies and systems? I truly believe these perspectives are critical to creating early childhood policies to support those who are most impacted and have been traditionally excluded from participating in the decision-making process.
Leslie: My parents are both immigrants and my dad talked a lot with my sisters and I about his experiences with racism and exclusion. Growing up in a largely white community in Oregon, the experience of feeling othered is something I carried through much of my childhood. And I think as a Japanese American, it is impossible to separate out the personal and the societal when you think about the collective trauma of internment and the resulting emphasis on assimilation and what that has meant for language and culture – for our parents’ generation’s focus on achieving a particular kind of mainstream success. I think about the difference between feeling shame and pride as a child about my heritage and what it means to create systems that honor the cultures and strengths of our communities.
On a larger scale, I don’t think you can successfully work for the public good without racial equity and anti-racism as core tenets. When we look at outcomes for children, for families, for individuals, and for our workforce and in our economy, there are glaring racial inequities.
One of the beliefs we carry in our work with the Fellowship is that communities who are most impacted by educational injustices must be represented in positions of power within policy development processes and decision-making to identify and address complex, structural inequities that are detrimental to all. Beyond the moral obligations we have in our society around fairness and justice, which I think were ingrained in me from an early age, it’s also practical. We cannot achieve shared prosperity and a thriving society without racial equity and anti-racism work. The opportunity gap in early childhood has huge implications for children in school and life and it also has implications for our public systems. Greater costs in special education and other supportive services, greater costs to the criminal legal system, and down the road, a less qualified workforce. And it’s more than just education systems. Supporting families in early childhood – a time with woefully inadequate public policy and investment in families – can also mean a reduction in child welfare services, greater prevention in health and mental health services, all of which reduce both human and economic cost. Centering the families most impacted is essential for identifying and implementing solutions and for our shared success.
If there was one thing you would want everyone to know about your work, what would it be?
We think our Core Beliefs and Commitments to Action reflect how we think about and are approaching this work. They underscore something that has become increasingly clear to us over time: at the foundation of progress is relationships and trust. These are necessary to impact complex systems and effect system-change. Creating intentional space for BIPOC leaders – spaces that we did not always have ourselves – is a critical part of this work.
Looking back on your Evans School experience, what stands out as being particularly impactful during that time?
Our work with the Partnership for Cultural Diversity (PCD) was a big part of our Evans School experience. We spent a lot of time doing what we learned to do at Evans in the public sphere but focused internally on the school itself: collective stakeholder work to identify issues, thinking through a theory of change and what we had agency to work on, prioritization and action, and planning around succession and leadership. Even then, we focused a lot of attention on leadership and representation. For example, we spent most of most time and energy when we were co-leads of PCD on faculty diversity and hiring. It’s really no coincidence that there are a lot of common themes in the work we did together in graduate school and what we are doing now.
How does your Evans education impact how you approach your work today?
Nubia: As I mentioned, my undergraduate education gave me broad theoretical knowledge and opened my worldview. It was at Evans where I learned how to make that theory actionable. If I was going to pick one particular concept that is most impactful, it would be the importance of stakeholder engagement. This is something that also goes back to the value of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. At Evans, I was introduced to the notion that as public policy professionals, we must engage with the people who have a vested interest in the specific program or policy being worked on. Furthermore, we must ensure that we are intentionally seeking out these critically important diverse perspectives and inviting them into the conversation. Critically, we must then truly value their contributions, ideally making better decisions because we have taken the time to proactively seek out stakeholders. I have used various racial equity tools throughout my career, and a central analytical component is to engage with those most impacted to assess benefit or burden from their perspective, ultimately, ensuring that the policy or program being worked on is pro-equity. The stakeholder engagement was a seed planted at Evans and has evolved over my career with a specific racial equity lens.
Leslie: Three things come to my mind pretty quickly: memos, leadership, and mentorship. Graduate school helped me learn to write in ways that were more thoughtful about the goals of communication and the structures that are useful to communicate complex information in accessible ways. I do think the most valuable experience I had at Evans was the work Nubia and I did leading PCD. We were students within the structure of a graduate program designed to prepare people for external work in the public sector and nonprofit work, which itself had strengths and weaknesses, particularly when it came to race. Pushing from within about how important racial equity work and the responsibility of institutions to further that work was another step in my personal and professional journey and thinking about how I used my positional power and agency to move change. I’ve been thinking about a lot lately about mentorships I’ve had – and at Evans I would specifically point to David Harrison – and people who have made me feel like I had the skills and abilities to engage. I distinctly remember a moment when I expressed doubt in my analysis in a class, and afterwards he told me that I could sit at any table and hold my own. It meant a lot to me because I knew he had been at a lot of tables and I held him in such high regard. I still think about his words when I’m feeling unsure and use them to bolster myself up sometimes – and it was 14 years ago! It made me even more aware of my responsibility to offer encouragement and support to others as I’ve advanced in my own career.
What are one or two resources that inspire you personally or professionally?
Leslie: My sister gave me We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice by Adrienne Maree Browna couple of years ago and it really resonated with me. In terms of early childhood, University of Washington’s ownInstitute for Learning and Brain Sciences (I-LABS) has been producing strong research on the impact of the earliest years on brain development. I-LABS and the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University are great sources of information and data on why we should care both as individuals and as a broader society about the unparalleled period of human development in early childhood.
Nubia: I would point to the PBS documentary and recently updated website (new resources from 2020): Race: The Power of Illusion. I have used parts of the documentary in many trainings on race over the years, and it has been very eye-opening for my own understanding on how as a nation we have created racial categories and then created institutions and policies to reinforce those categories. It underscores who is represented when policies are created matters. We must have multiple perspectives represented, especially those who have been historically left out and marginalized, and this is why I believe the work of the WA ECP Fellowship is so important.
We’d love to learn more about you and your tremendous contributions to the public good, so we can share your story as we connect, learn, and reflect. Share your story!