While economic deprivation and socio-economic disparities exist throughout the United States, certain regions and states experience a disproportionate share of these issues, especially as they pertain to women and minorities. Policies can play an important role in understanding such inequalities. My research with Dr. Baker aimed to address whether differences in state-level policies can help further our understanding of disparities in outcomes across place. My research experience helped me to investigate Policy, Place, and Economic Inequality with a focus on women in the United States. This gave me the opportunity to further investigate several factors relating to inequality including race/ethnicity, sexuality, location, education, & poverty. Investigating the status quo of women led us to utilize several sources for our research. We followed trends in social media, news, and academic literature. Each of these provided us with a plethora of related problems that are connected to this economic inequality. For example, one of the most popular issues is the wage gap. In depth analysis of the wage gap, including occupational segregation and the intersection of race and gender is less frequent. This led us to take a closer look at the timeline of women’s rights and racial discrimination policies by synthesizing several databases. By doing this we had the opportunity to track policy change by state and region. As a student double majoring in sociology and economics, I feel as though this was the perfect project for me! Researching the intersection of factors affecting economic inequality has allowed me to take a closer look at society around me. I will continue to use this experience as I move further into my majors’ related classes.
While economic deprivation and socio-economic disparities exist throughout the United States, certain regions and states experience a disproportionate share of these issues, especially as they pertain to women and minorities. Policies can play an important role in understanding such inequalities. My research with Dr. Baker aimed to address whether differences in state-level policies can help further our understanding of disparities in outcomes across place. My research experience helped me to investigate Policy, Place, and Economic Inequality with a focus on women in the United States. This gave me the opportunity to further investigate several factors relating to inequality including race/ethnicity, sexuality, location, education, & poverty. Investigating the status quo of women led us to utilize several sources for our research. We followed trends in social media, news, and academic literature. Each of these provided us with a plethora of related problems that are connected to this economic inequality. For example, one of the most popular issues is the wage gap. In depth analysis of the wage gap, including occupational segregation and the intersection of race and gender is less frequent. This led us to take a closer look at the timeline of women’s rights and racial discrimination policies by synthesizing several databases. By doing this we had the opportunity to track policy change by state and region. As a student double majoring in sociology and economics, I feel as though this was the perfect project for me! Researching the intersection of factors affecting economic inequality has allowed me to take a closer look at society around me. I will continue to use this experience as I move further into my majors’ related classes.