Young Investigator Development Grants Program
The Young Investigator Development Grants Program is intended to provide development funds to support new and continuing research on poverty by young academics in the social and behavioral sciences. The program offers seed funds for the support of research time or resources in the hope that the projects will develop into more full-fledged research paradigms and thus a new corps of young poverty scholars with an expertise on the South. Another goal of this competition is to offer mentoring and networking opportunities to young poverty scholars, and to this end, award winners are expected to attend the annual UKCPR Small Grants Conference on the University of Kentucky Campus.
2011 Young Investigator Grant Winners
Brian Cadena, Assistant Professor of Economics at University of Colorado. Serving as Co-PI is Brian K. Kovak at Carnegie Mellon University. Drs. Cadena and Kovak’s proposal is titled U.S. Mexico Local Labor Market Integration: Evidence from the Housing Bust. In this study, the authors propose to determine whether the housing bust created incentives for potential immigrants to avoid entering certain local labor markets and whether immigration flows responded as expected. The results will have implications for determining if the decrease in the inflow of immigrants can mitigate the negative labor market consequences of shocks, such as the recent recession.
Celeste Carruthers, Assistant Professor of Economics at University of Tennessee at Knoxville. Marianne Wanamaker at University of Tennessee is serving as Co-PI on this project. Drs. Carruther and Wanamaker’s proposal is titled Closing the Gap? The Effect of Private Philanthropy on the Provision of African-American Schooling in the U.S. South. The purpose of this project is to determine if philanthropic spending on African-American education in the pre-WWII South helped to reduce black-white inequality in education spending, or if philanthropy led to a reduction in public spending due to crowd out.
Robynn Cox, Assistant Professor of Economics at Spelman College. Dr. Cox’s proposal is titled Does Working While Incarcerated Help Ex-Offenders on the Labor Market?: the Case of North Carolina. The primary goal of this study is to estimate the impact of prison work programs on inmate employment outcomes after leaving prison (e.g. unemployment duration, employment duration, and earnings).
Christine Durrance, Assistant Professor of Public Policy at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. Durrance’s proposal is titled Heterogeneous Effects of Access to Emergency Contraception: The Case of Medicaid Recipients and Over-the-Counter Access. The goal of this study is to estimate the effect of emergency contraception (EC) on unintended pregnancies, as well as heterogeneity in this effect across poverty-relevant subgroups.
Fuhua Zhai, Assistant Professor of Social Work at Stony Brook University. Jane Waldfogel and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn from Columbia University are serving as Co-PIs on this project. Drs. Zhai, Waldfogel and Brooks-Gunn’s proposal is titled Can High-quality Child Care Programs Boost Children’s School Readiness in the South: Evidence from a Birth Cohort Study in Eight Cities of Five States. The goal of this study is to examine the effect of Head Start and Pre-K attendance on school readiness of young children in the South.
2010 Young Investigator Grant Winners
Jenifer Bratter, assistant professor of sociology, Rice University. Project: What about these children? Assessing poverty among the hidden population of mixed-race children in single-parent families.
Mark Leach, assistant professor of rural sociology and demography, Pennsylvania State University. Project: Migration networks, household structure, and child poverty: An investigation of poverty among the children of Mexican migrants.
Elizabeth Rigby, assistant professor of political science, University of Houston. Project: Anti-poverty policy in the South: How race- and class-based political dynamics interact to limit redistribution.
Christopher Wildeman, assistant professor of sociology, Yale University. Project: Imprisonment and population health, 1960-2005.
