In Fall of 2021, the Economics department launched a new visiting speaker series on Race, Privilege, and Inequality. The objective of this new series is to bring to campus economists who can speak knowledgeably to current issues surrounding racial inequality.
The 2024 Race, Privilege and Inequality Speaker Series lecturer will be Dr. Monica Garcia-Perez who is a Professor in the Department of Economics, Herberger School of Business, at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, and Visiting Senior Faculty at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University.
April 15, 2024 – “Health Equity Issues among Immigrants and Hispanics: The Role of Economics and Immigration Policies“ by Dr. Monica Garcia-Perez
Dr. Garcia-Perez, is a Professor in the Department of Economics, Herberger School of Business, at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, and a Visiting Senior Faculty at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University. She is the 3rd speaker in the Economics department’s Race, Privilege and Inequality Visiting Speaker Series.
Lecture summary: Racial and ethnic disparities in health and wealth have regularly been studied separately; we do not yet understand their interrelationships, even though Hispanics have a higher life expectancy than whites or Blacks. With 1 in 6 people in the country being Hispanic and with a fast-growing Hispanic population, Hispanics’ life expectancy affects the nation’s demographics and population changes. The “Latino advantage” is not reflected in all health conditions. Latinos are more likely to die due to liver disease, diabetes, AIDS, or cervical cancer than non-Hispanic White individuals. The analysis complicates even further when the lack of access to healthcare affects the likelihood of diagnosis and care for certain conditions, especially chronic conditions. Hispanics are 63% more likely to be diagnosed with diabetes and 2.5 times the chance of undiagnosed diabetes. This lecture will show the connection between immigration policies and socioeconomic background that shape the aggregate findings about the Hispanic population’s health outcomes in the US, with a lens that covers different life stages and potential intergenerational links.
Previous Race, Privilege, and Inequality Visiting Speaker Lectures
- October 6, 2022 – “The Minnesota Paradox: Racial Inequality and Progressive Public Policy” by Samuel L. Myers, Jr., Roy Wilkins Professor of Human Relations and Social Justice, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
- October 20, 2021 – “How Economists Think About Discrimination: The Green Books and the Geography of Public Accommodations Segregation” by Dr. Trevor Logan, the Associate Dean and Hazel C. Youngberg Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, College of Arts and Sciences at The Ohio State University.