As the academic year comes to a close, we are pleased to share
our recent Center activities and announce plans for the coming
year. See the policy brief links below for recent research
on poverty, health care and labor markets, and mark your calendar
for our fall conference on Poverty and Place. Please check back
often for the latest new research and upcoming events, and have a
great summer.
Some policy analysts, policymakers and scholars argue that
low-wage workers should “work their way out of poverty” by
acquiring the human capital that would enable them to leave
poverty-level jobs.
In times of rising inequality and declining real wages, access to
health care is central to building the human capital necessary to
have a chance of escaping poverty. Poverty research and poverty
programs have long recognized poor health to be associated with
low income. Indeed, poor health may be a consequence of poverty,
a cause of poverty, or both.
Joy Melnikow, MD, MPH is the Director of the Center for
Healthcare Policy and Research and Professor of Family and
Community Medicine at the University of California, Davis. She
serves on the executive committee for the UC Davis Comprehensive
Cancer Center, and is a member of the US Preventive Services Task
Force. She received her MD from UC San Francisco and her MPH in
epidemiology from UC Berkeley.
M. Anne Visser is an Associate Professor of Community and
Regional Development in the Department of Human Ecology at the
University of California, Davis. Her research interests include
the socioeconomic implications of the informalization of work and
employment, low-wage and informal labor markets, and the impact
of state policy and socially-based labor market interventions on
economic opportunity.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Center for Poverty Research Director Ann
Huff Stevens presented on poverty in California at the first
meeting of the new legislative caucus on ending poverty in the
state.
