Graduate Students

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Justin Freebourn

PhD Student | Political Science

Michael Bates

Are attitudes towards basic income structured similarly as attitudes towards welfare? Our research question is whether and how racial attitudes affect support for basic income policies, especially in comparison with welfare policies. A basic income is an unconditional cash grant given to all members of a society regardless of need. Basic income is expected to produce broader public support and lower administrative costs compared to traditional, means-tested welfare programs. This is because welfare programs do not benefit all populations equally, and thus have become racialized in the minds of the white public (Gilens 1995, 2009). Moreover, cash transfer programs represent an effective, direct means of combatting poverty. Many countries and organizations have begun to experiment with basic income policies as a means to fight inequality generally and poverty specifically. However, there are few studies—especially within the United States—that look at public attitudes towards basic income policies. The study proposed here is an important first step in examining how Americans feel about basic income, and how racial attitudes affect support for this anti-poverty policy tool.

Learn more about Justin's other Blum supported Research

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Alessandro Morosin

PhD Student | Sociology

Alessandro Morosin

What motivates low-income people to mobilize against the extraction of natural resources, even when their governments claim that these projects generate much-needed jobs in underdeveloped regions? How do gender, indigenous identity, and globalization shape poor people’s motivations for, and experiences within, these mobilizations in repressive political contexts? I pursue these questions through in-depth interviews with opponents of mining in Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca, coupled with six months of multi-site participant observation with Oaxaca’s anti-mining movement. My dissertation reveals how environmental ethics are constructed in interaction with the localized subsistence concerns of poor rural populations. I trace the process whereby such concerns can become translated and solidified into broad-based resistance to mining. I also show why the participants’ experiences and motivations vary by gender. To do this, I uncover how neoliberal globalization provokes protest not just by privatizing natural resources and threatening land rights, but also by transforming gender roles in the process of liberalizing agriculture.

Learn more about Alessandro's Blum supported research

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Deepshika Batheja

Economics

India is home to the largest youth population in the world (over 650 million people below the age of 35) but it also has very high rates of youth unemployment. Over 30% of youth aged 15-29 in India are Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEET). This is more than double the OECD average and almost three times that of China (Jethmalani, 2017). The call center industry, also referred to as the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, is the largest private sector employer in India, providing jobs to around 3.9 million people (NASSCOM Report, 2017). These jobs are starting jobs and source of financial independence and livelihood for many young people. It is a high pressure and target-oriented job, however, with constant performance appraisals/feedback by supervisors. Thus, this industry has very high employee turnover rates. We plan to conduct a randomized a randomized controlled trial to study if incentives and feedbacks can improve retention of agents in this high employee turnover industry.

Call center jobs have been providing a pathway out of poverty to millions across the world. Over the past two decades, the BPO industry has grown rapidly in India and in many other English-speaking lower middle income countries like Philippines, Sri Lanka and El Salvador. There is causal evidence of improvements in poverty and well-being (health, educational and fertility outcomes) of young girls and women in small villages in India due to the availability of call center job opportunities (Jensen, 2012). However, this industry faces problems of retention and is plagued with high attrition rates. Many workers quit and return to relatively lower paying jobs like domestic work and self-employed agricultural work. (Blattman and Dercon, 2012). Retaining workers in this industry through better human resource management and thereby increasing the job satisfaction levels of employees can be an effective way to stop people from falling back into the poverty trap.

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Yoon Ro

Economics

This research addresses inequality in student access to high-quality public education, which becomes a major contributing factor to inequality of opportunity as a whole. This study seeks to answer three questions: (1) Does the use of teacher VA measures to inform personnel decision-making result in better outcomes for students? (2) Do effects differ depending on students' initial standing in their academic achievement? (3) Are students who are disadvantaged more likely to attend schools with ineffective teachers? Previous research has highlighted the correlation between inequality in educational achievement and earnings inequality (Blau and Khan 2005). Hence widening disparities in academic achievement and subsequent life outcomes underscore the necessity to address the inequality in the opportunity of education (Duncan & Murmane 2011).

By understanding the relationship between educational deprivation and poverty, a better understanding of the persistence of intergenerational poverty could be observed. Many researchers have found that a student's education has a high predictive power on his future earnings. One concern is that the students who are already saddled with the least privileged family and residing in impoverished neighborhoods have a high probability of having teachers who are less attentive to students. Having a quality teacher is one of the most important factors that affect students' performance (Rockoff 2004). It affects their future academic achievement, and their earning potential thereafter (Chetty et al. 2014). With proper education, the impoverished students have an opportunity to break the chain of intergenerational poverty.

Blum Initiative on Global & Regional Poverty

Blum Initiative on Global & Regional Poverty

Graduate Students

Graduate Students

Justin Freebourn

Alessandro Morosin

Deepshika Batheja

Yoon Ro

Blum Initiative Director David Brady