Learn more about my research below.
Areas of Expertise
Substantively, my research make contributions to three broad literatures: state and local politics, social inequalities, and groups and identities. In sum, I explore how subnational policies and politics exacerbate or ameliorate inequalities experienced by marginalized groups, particularly related to socioeconomic status and health.
Methodologically, I use advanced quantitative approaches for causal inference, quantitative text analysis, and spatial analysis.
Dissertation Research
My dissertation, “Health, Wealth, and Representation: Three Essays on LGBTQ+ Politics and Policy” , takes an interdisciplinary approach to studying politics and policies in the United States affecting the queer community. I leverage theories and frameworks from political science, economics, and public health to inform my research and generate novel research questions of importance to the study of queer politics and policy. My three-essay dissertation also showcases a variety of methodological approaches, including text analysis, methods for causal inference, and latent variable analysis, exemplifying my ability as an interdisciplinary scholar to produce cutting-edge scholarship that transcends disciplinary lines.
My dissertation research has been supported by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law as part of their LGBTQ & Racial Justice grant program.
Essay 1: Health
Decentralized, Bureaucratized, and Desensitized? Exploring Social Constructions in HIV Prevention and Care Plans across the US States
The Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resource Emergency (CARE) Act, passed in 1990, ignited the United States’ federal response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic. While scholarly attention has been placed on various aspects of HIV/AIDS policymaking, few studies examine the implementation of state-level policy to combat HIV/AIDS.
The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program Part B allocates funding to state jurisdictions to develop and implement interventions to mitigate the transmission of HIV/AIDS. Constituting the largest fiscal Part of the Program, states yield significant discretion over contemporary HIV/AIDS interventions.
In this dissertation chapter, I examine the social constructions of target groups in the context of bureaucratic policymaking. I leverage an original text dataset of comprehensive intervention strategies assembled by State Health Departments to ascertain the variation in how target populations experience policy burdens and benefits in HIV/AIDS-mitigation efforts.
Essay 2: Wealth
Giving Credit(s) Where They Are Due? Health Effects of Expanded Earned Income Tax Credits for LGBTQ+ Individuals
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), enacted in 1975 and expanded multiple times since, is commended by policymakers and social policy scholars as a monumental antipoverty policy in the United States by providing an annual credit targeted to low-income families.
Many states, due to the success of its national complement, adopted their own EITC to disperse funds to low-income individuals and families. The economic benefit of state EITCs has been linked to generating positive health outcomes for recipients.
The LGBTQ+ community experiences poverty at a higher rate than their straight, cis-gendered counterparts; however, no study examines the effects of the EITCs, lauded as one of the most significant antipoverty policies, for LGBTQ+ recipients.
In this dissertation chapter, I study the positive health benefits of state-level EITC for LGBTQ+ recipients. To generate my estimate, I exploit the variation in timing of state adoption and EITC benefit amount.
Essay 3: Representation
‘Queer’ying the Districts: Establishing a Measure of Queer-friendly State Legislative Districts
Over the past two decades, scholars have examined the electoral and institutional determinants of increased descriptive representation, particularly for women and racial/ethnic minorities in the legislatures. Studied at both the federal- and state-levels, previous studies have identified district-level characteristics associated with an increased likelihood of electoral success for historically underrepresented groups in government.
In recent years, a ‘Rainbow Wave’ of openly-LGBTQ+ candidates running for office has been creating a splash across all levels of government. However, few studies focus on the factors leading to this increased LGBTQ+ descriptive representation.
In this dissertation essay, I create a novel measure of what I call a district’s queer-friendliness using state legislative districts as my unit of analysis. To create my measure, I constructed an original dataset of openly-LGBTQ+ politicians winning their election to state legislative office and the districts they represent. My latent variable approach to measuring a district’s queer-friendliness not only allows me to identify the characteristics most associated with positive electoral outcomes for openly-LGBTQ+ candidates running for state legislative office, but also predict which districts LGBTQ+ candidates would be likely to find success.
Published Work
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
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Contraceptions Deserts: The Effects of Title X Rule Changes on Planned Parenthood
with Candis Watts Smith, Rebecca J. Kreitzer, and Tracee M. Saunders in Politics & Gender. Forthcoming.
Historically, access to contraception has been supported in a bipartisan way, best exemplified by consistent Congressional funding of Title X--the only federal program specifically focused on providing affordable reproductive healthcare to American residents. However, in an era of partisan polarization, Title X has become a political and symbolic pawn, in part due to its connection to family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood. The conflicts around Title X highlight the effects of the intertwining of abortion politics with that of contraception policy, particularly as they relate to reproductive justice and gendered policymaking. Family planning organizations like Planned Parenthood have responded to these battles by bowing out of the Title X network. To what extent are contraception deserts--places characterized by inequitable access to Title X--developed or expanded? What is the demographic make-up of these spaces of inequality? We leverage data from the OPA and the U.S. Census and use the integrated two-step floating catchment area method to illustrate the effects of a major change in the Title X network in 10 states. Our results reveal the widespread human ramifications of increasing constraints on family planning organizations due to quiet but insidious federal bureaucratic rule changes.
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Affordable but Inaccessible? Contraception Deserts in the US States
with Rebecca J. Kreitzer, Candis Watts Smith, and Tracee M. Saunders in Journal of Health Politics, Policy & Law. 2020.
Context: This article focuses on whether, and the extent to which, the resources made available by Title X—the only federal policy aimed specifically at reproductive health care—are equitably accessible. Here, equitable means that barriers to accessing services are lowest for those people who need them most.
Methods: The authors use geographic information systems (GIS) and statistical/spatial analysis (specifically the integrated two-step floating catchment area [I2SFCA] method) to study the spatial and nonspatial accessibility of Title X clinics in 2018.
Findings: The authors find that contraception deserts vary across the states, with between 17% and 53% of the state population living in a desert. Furthermore, they find that low-income people and people of color are more likely to live in certain types of contraception deserts.
Conclusions: The analyses reveal not only a wide range of sizes and shapes of contraception deserts across the US states but also a range of severity of inequity.
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The Evolution of Morality Policy Debate: Moralization and Demoralization
with Rebecca J. Kreitzer and Christopher Z. Mooney in The Forum. 2019.
Scholars of morality policy have built an extensive literature surrounding these issues, which often are associated with unusual political behavior. Early studies aimed at explaining this behavior but avoided defining a “morality policy” explicitly, typically by focusing on issues that appeared obviously to pertain to morality, like abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Drawing on the existing morality policy scholarship and classic theories of public policy, we argue that no public policy is inherently moral. Rather, policies may be “moralized” or “demoralized” over time, not due to any intrinsic characteristic, but because the prominent policy frames in their debate have changed. Public opinion and its proxies, along with certain exogenous shocks, may be important in determining when a morality frame will be more prevalent. Because the distinctiveness of morality policy lies in the discourse surrounding it, scholars should examine the behavior and attitudes of relevant advocates in these debates, rather than relying on aggregate data and making assumptions about intrinsic policy characteristics.
Book Chapters
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Whose Opinion Matters? The Role of Elite Actors and Elite Interest Groups in Setting the Abortion Agenda
with Rebecca J. Kreitzer and Emily U. Schilling in Interest Group Politics, 10th ed. 2019.
