The Carsey Forum

Issue #9, April 2007

Spotlight On

What’s Behind NH’s High Ranking for Children’s Health Insurance Coverage?

It’s no secret that New Hampshire boasts the nation’s third-highest health insurance rate for children, but how the state manages this high ranking has been a bit of a mystery. The word on the street has been that the success is due to New Hampshire Healthy Kids (NHHK), the non-profit corporation that administers SCHIP and Medicaid programs for children. A team of Carsey researchers – including Senior Fellow Sally Ward, Research Assistant Sarah Savage, and Post-Doc Nena Stracuzzi - conducted an assessment of this organization, finding that NHHK is one of three factors responsible for achieving and maintaining the state’s high insurance rate. Other factors include the high rate of employer-sponsored insurance in the state and concensus among New Hampshire-ites that children should be insured. A new brief pulls together the results of this research and offers information pertinent to New Hampshire, but also instructive for other states. Download a copy at http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/documents/NHHealthyKids_final.pdf.

Drum Roll, Please…Introducing the Carsey Rural Fellows

The Carsey Institute is pleased to introduce our new outstanding group of Rural Fellows, who have come aboard to advise the burgeoning programs of the Center for Rural Families and Communities and to author publications within their longstanding areas of expertise. William O’Hare, a senior fellow with KIDS COUNT at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, has laid the groundwork for all to come by authoring several leading Carsey publications. He is now joined by Anita Brown-Graham, director of the Institute for Emerging Issues; Leif Jensen, professor of Rural Sociology and Demography at Penn State University and author of the Carsey immigration report; Kenneth Johnson, professor of Sociology at Loyola University-Chicago and author of the Carsey rural demographics report; Daniel Lichter, director of the Bronfenbrenner Life Course Center at Cornell University; Rogelio Saenz, professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University; and Ann Tickamyer, professor of Sociology at Ohio University. Click on their names to read interviews on a variety of topics from rural child poverty to Latino immigration.

New Research Shows Middle Class Shrinking in New England

Relative income equality has long distinguished Yankee New England, but a new study by the Carsey Institute highlights a disturbing trend of growing income inequality in the region. In fact, the gap between the highest and lowest wage earners in New England is widening at the highest rate in the nation. This divide, according to the study’s author Carsey Senior Fellow Ross Gittell, is due to the loss of manufacturing employment for low-skilled workers coupled with increased demand, and rewards, for high-skilled and high-tech employment. New Hampshire, Carsey’s home state, ranks among the top five nationally in the increase in income disparity. Read about the implications for New England’s middle class at http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/documents/IncomeInequality_final.pdf

A Homepage is Where the Heart Is

Reflecting the ever expanding programs and dynamic energy that now defines Carsey, our new homepage buzzes vibrantly with the stories, faces, and projects that are Carsey in 2007. The site is now the “heart” of the Institute, a portal into the core of our work. Traveling no further than the front page to our web site, visitors can now read from interviews with researchers, learn about social changes through colorful charts, meet our students, hear from the director, join our mailing list, find events happening this month, and link to the most frequently hit pages on the site, in addition to getting quick access to breaking news stories and to our projects and centers. See what makes Carsey tick and visit http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu.

Three Times Our Original Size and Growing

For those who have witnessed the Institute’s recent growth in physical space, it has been something like the miracle of the compressed sponge – add water, wait a few minutes, and voilá, the sponge pops up three times its original size. After a few months of construction, the Carsey Institute now occupies 4,000 feet of newly renovated space on the ground floor of Huddleston Hall. The new space features a large survey facility for the Survey Center, two meeting rooms, an entry area for waiting visitors, a fully operational kitchen, and enough rooms and cubicles to house 22 staff. We will soon welcome the Carsey Institute Survey Center staff, who are finally joining the rest of the group in Huddleston Hall after three years of a long-distance relationship. Visit http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/contactus.html to see photos of our new digs or stop by in person. Housewarming gifts are welcome.

Coming Soon!

Carsey Offers the Nation a Fresh Perspective on Children’s Health Insurance

A policy brief on rural children’s health insurance, to be released by the Institute in early May, will put a spotlight on an important aspect of the SCHIP debate not yet in the public discourse. Despite a flurry of reports on health insurance coverage for children, virtually none of them have examined the unique situation of rural families where one-fifth of all the nation’s poor children live. The author, Rural Fellow William O’Hare, takes an in-depth look at the health insurance programs, such as SCHIP and Medicaid, that rural children rely on for medical care. This brief will come on the wings of debates about SCHIP reauthorization at both the federal and state levels. Be in the know and read the brief as soon as it is released at http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu.

Caring about Caregivers

The largescale movement of women into the paid labor market has brought sweeping change into family life, and also in who cares for the elderly and children. Today, our society depends, in part, on the caring work of many paid professionals. The Carsey Institute is studying workers in two low-wage, predominantly female caregiving occupations plagued with high turnover--direct care workers and child care workers. Although these caregivers are working, many still live in low-income families and lack health insurance. A coming policy brief will provide a better understanding of how women in these caregiving occupations fare when compared to other female workers and discusses factors that contribute to their continued employment. If you care about caregivers, check the Carsey web site in late May to read the brief.

The Low Down on Rural Low-Income Families

An upcoming brief authored by graduate student and Carsey Policy Fellow Allison Churilla profiles one third of all rural families, the families that are considered “low-income.” Implicit in any study of families is the idea that children will be affected, and this study also looks at rural children living in low-income families as well as the demographic characteristics of their parents. Some of the basic challenges that confront these families are explored through information on educational attainment, employment, government assistance for families and children, and housing lived in by low-income families. For a better understanding of rural Americans, find this brief on the Carsey website in early June.

The Rural Young and Restless

While attention to disconnected urban youths grows, the Carsey Institute will be focusing on rural youth who can’t be found in the workforce, school, or army. These are the young adults, ages 16-24, who are finding the transition to adulthood to be a hard ride. Two rural sociologists from Penn State University, Tasha Snyder and Diane Mclaughlin, are collaborating with the Carsey Institute to research the experiences of these youth and compare how they fare in different states. A fact sheet summarizing the research will be released this summer, with a longer report to follow.

Other News

Their Memory Lives On: Fallen Rural Soldiers

When the Carsey Institute published our fact sheet identifying the disproportionate number of casualties among rural soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan in November, we expected the news about rural soldiers to be eye-opening for many. However, the response by the media to this information has been beyond expectations. President Bush’s proposal to send more troops to Iraq added fuel to the fire that was already propelling Carsey research into the hands of policymakers and other decision-makers around the country. The high share of deaths by rural soldiers and the relationship of these statistics to diminished opportunities in rural areas has been discussed in The New York Times, The Nation, Newsweek, CBS, Frontline India, The Chicago Tribune and other high circulation papers and popular media outlets. Visit http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=161392 to read The Nation’s blog highlighting the study.

Giving a Raise to Two Million Rural Workers

In the heat of the debate in the U.S. Senate about increasing the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25, the Carsey Institute released research showing that a raise would benefit rural, low-wage workers every bit as much, if not more, than workers in big cities. More than half of the nearly two million low-wage workers in rural America who would benefit from this increase in the minimum wage have children under age 18 in the household. A public teleconference on this study prompted more than 40 nonprofit leaders from around the country to call in. Read the fact sheet summarizing this research by Rural Fellow William O’Hare at http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/documents/MinimumWage_final.pdf.

New England’s Young Adults are Splitting

Senior Fellow Ross Gittell identifies a disturbing pattern of outmigration from New England by young adults ages 25-34 in a recent Carsey Institute publication. During 1990 to 2004, the population of young adults in the region declined nearly 25 percent, while the national average was a decline of only 7 percent. The loss of this age cohort in New England seems dire compared to the greater than 10 percent growth in several Western states. Find out what Professor Gittell says about why these whippersnappers are leaving New England, and what can be done to prevent the region from becoming an older and less vibrant place at http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/documents/NHYoungAdults_final.pdf.

These Fellas Are Our New Faculty Fellows

The Carsey Institute has Senior Fellows, Rural Fellows, Graduate Fellows, Winant Fellows, and now we’ve got our new Faculty Fellows. One could say that the Carsey Institute is in good company. And our new company of faculty fellows are no exception; their collaboration with Carsey researchers in working groups builds new research programs. The four early career faculty who’ve recently joined the “Carsey family” include Thomas Safford, Assistant Professor of Sociology, who is working with us on community and environment research and Corinna Jenkins Tucker, Associate Professor of Family Studies; Cesar Rebellon, Assistant Professor of Sociology; and Karen VanGundy, Assistant Professor of Sociology, who are developing our youth research program in the northern forest.

New Projects

Taking a Good Long Look at New Hampshire’s North Country

With new funding from the Tillotson Trust, the Carsey Institute begins a long-term project to gather benchmark information that will inform leaders in rural northern New Hampshire as they endeavor to move from managing the loss of traditional industries and, subsequently, the region’s youth, to building a sustainable future that attracts and retains young people. This three-pronged project involves gathering and analyzing socioeconomic indicators for the north country region; speaking to 1500 adults via telephone in spring 2007 and again in 2009 about their opinions, civic behavior, migration and work experience; and tracking highschoolers into adulthood to learn about the transition and how communities affect different outcomes, especially among high risk youth.

The Three Faces of Rural Places

As the Ford and Kellogg Foundation’s first Annual Rural Assembly approaches in June, Carsey researchers are talking to rural practitioners and citizens across the country – people in amenity rich areas attracting retirees, second home owners and footloose professionals; people in declining resource dependent areas where mining, agriculture, and other industries once supported a solid middle class; and people in chronically poor communities where decades of resource extraction and underinvestment have left a legacy of poverty – to provide a solid grounding for this large, national meeting. In addition to telephone interviews with Ford Foundation grantees, the research team is hosting roundtables in three regions and conducting broad surveys of rural residents in five areas that are experiencing at least one of the three broad challenges listed above. This work will help to bring the faces and grassroot concerns of those in rural places to the forefront of public policy decisions.

Policy Leaders Get Framed

Carsey’s Policy Leadership Initiative gathers speed following the first gathering of leaders that took place in November. Twenty-four nonprofit leaders from the northern New England states will be meeting again this summer after individual consultations with the highly regarded FrameWorks Institute to develop their skills at communicating issues impacting families in a way that elicits the responses these advocates seek from policymakers and the public. Meanwhile, the Institute is developing an electronic community space where policy leaders can share documents and news. The change in seasons will bring a new cohort of policy leaders together for Year Two of the initiative. For more information about the initiative, click on http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/policyleadership.html.

Carsey’s Evaluation Team Keeps Cranking

As the Carsey assessment of the New Hampshire Healthy Kids corporation comes to a close, Carsey’s evaluation team turns their attention to new studies of nonprofit programs. The Community Campus in Portsmouth, NH, a unique grouping of nonprofits assisting children and families at one location, will be the site of a Carsey evaluation. Research examining the groups’ processes for working together will help the Community Campus define its co-located interagency model. Bonnie CLAC, a nonprofit that happens to sit within the Community Campus, will receive an evaluation of their program to help mostly credit poor individuals to own new cars. As research on these New Hampshire-based organizations gets into full swing, the Institute will finish an evaluation of Coastal Enterprises, Inc.’s program to help new immigrants to the Portland, Maine area own and operate their own small farm operations. Learn more at http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/evaluation.html.

New Staff

Another In-Migrant Moves to New Hampshire: Carsey Welcomes Kenneth Johnson

Demographer Kenneth Johnson studies why people move and where they move to, and soon he will become another data point in these statistics when he joins the Carsey Institute as Visiting Faculty. Hailing from Chicago where he teaches at Loyola University, Professor Johnson will soon trade the Great Lakes for the different amenities of the Atlantic coast, proving his point that people move to places with abundant natural beauty (although the Great Lakes are pretty grand, too). He will be sharing his rich, deep demographic experience – with a focus in changes in amenity areas and forest dependent regions – with the Carsey Institute. At Carsey, Professor Johnson will conduct research on demographic shifts in the New England region and in rural America adding to his growing impact on the way policymakers and practitioners understand challenges facing rural people. He is the author of the popular Carsey report, Demographic Trends in Rural and Small Town America, and a Carsey Rural Fellow. Read Kenneth Johnson’s bio at http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/johnson.html.

Jennifer Sherman, New Post-Doc, Remembers What Winter is Like

"Shocking” is how Jennifer Sherman, Carsey’s newest post-doctoral research fellow, would describe her re-entry into New England winter after more than a decade in the San Francisco Bay Area. She joined the Carsey staff in January, after finishing her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of California-Berkeley. Jennifer is currently staying warm running from interview to interview, where she is discovering what New Hampshire’s emerging leaders have to say about the challenges of living and working in remote rural communities. She is no stranger to rural places, having written her dissertation on the effects of poverty and unemployment on rural families in California’s northern forest region. She grew up in a rural town in Connecticut and remembers having lived through winter before. Read Jennifer’s bio at http://www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/sherman.html.

Spotlight on Carsey Affiliate

Coastal Enterprises, Inc.

Coastal Enterprises Inc. (CEI) in Wiscassett, Maine is involved in just about everything. In fulfilling their mission to create economically and environmentally healthy Maine communities in which all people can reach their full potential, CEI offers financing to small businesses and natural resource industries, homeownership education and counseling, workshops for small businesses, employment and training resources, and lots of other good stuff categorized as “policy, research, and development.” Within this area of focus, CEI – under the leadership of Carla Dickstein, a Carsey policy leader – has partnered with the Carsey Institute in co-authoring our predatory lending brief and, more recently, is hosting a New England region roundtable as part of our research to inform the National Rural Assembly. Carsey researchers have worked with CEI to conduct an evaluation of their New Americans Sustainable Agriculture Project, which helps new immigrants start up farming businesses, and Carsey Director Mil Duncan serves on CEI’s board of directors. Visit CEI at http://www.ceimaine.org.

The Carsey Forum is published by The Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire. Inquires and requests to subscribe and unsubscribe should be addressed to Amy Seif, Forum editor, at amy.seif@unh.edu.