The Boston Fed Regional & Community Outreach (RCO) Visiting Fellows Program supports external scholars dedicated to advancing scholarly and policy-relevant research in areas related to RCO's work. This year's fellows are pursuing research related to three topics of importance: employment precarity, variable wealth implications of home ownership, and emerging economic coping strategies.

Analidis Ochoa, PhD Candidate, University of Michigan
Emerging Economic Coping Strategies Amidst a Growing Market for Blood Plasma

This work considers a growing economic coping strategy: engaging in the for-profit market for human blood plasma. As biotechnological innovation in the blood plasma therapeutics sector has advanced, demand has skyrocketed. This has resulted in the growth of the for-profit market for blood plasma in the United States, where people can give plasma up to twice per week and earn hundreds of dollars. This work will examine the extent to which engaging in this strategy is linked to social and economic inequality.

Junia Howell, Director and Founder, eruka and Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois Chicago
Hidden in Plain Sight: Examining Driving Factors of Variable Wealth Implications of Home Ownership

This work examines a potentially wealth-depleting aspect of home ownership that is experienced differently by economic strata: the regressive nature of property taxes, which are levied disproportionate to wealth level. There is some scholarship pointing to the regressive nature of property taxes, but researchers have yet to conduct a national, longitudinal analysis of property tax regressivity, its driving factors, or potential interventions. The proposed project fills this gap in the literature.

Michael Lachanski, PhD Candidate, University of Pennsylvania
The Geography of 21st Century U.S. Employment Precarity: Evidence from the Current Population Survey and General Social Survey

This work will describe how contingent work propensity, job insecurity levels, and job instability have varied from 2001 to 2022 across the Northeastern, Midwestern, Southern, and Western Census regions. This period includes the Great Recession and concludes with the COVID-19-induced Great Resignation. The work will take steps to understand regional disparities in employment precarity, which may help inform tailored strategies to mitigate specific precarity dimensions where they are most pronounced.

See more information about the Visiting Fellows program.