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Human Resources & Labor
Medicaid expansion represents a major injection of federal dollars into local economies. This new brief from Montenovo highlights research on the role of ACA expansion in directing federal funds toward high-need, low-income U.S. counties.
Read MoreThis article examines gender differences in self-employment composition and outcomes across the Midwest. It finds that while non-family businesses dominate overall, women are more concentrated in lower-profit firms, with family businesses playing a central role in higher earnings and intra-household caregiving distribution.
Read MoreMental health issues are a bigger challenge in rural areas and often worsened by limited access to care, stigma and workplace constraints. This study highlights the prevalence of common mental health issues among rural employees and underscores the need for targeted strategies that meet the unique needs of rural small business employees.
Read MoreImmigrant labor constitutes a substantial portion of the US meat and poultry processing workforce. However, the downstream effects of deportations targeting these immigrants on their food safety practices remain largely unexamined. We provide novel empirical evidence on the relationship between deportations, labor dynamics in the industry, and safety practices in the meat and poultry processing sector.
Read MoreThis article presents a conceptual framework integrating the Community Capitals Framework (CCF) and the Policy, Systems, and Environment (PSE) approach to understand community vitality and well-being. Community vitality links community assets to well-being outcomes through a dynamic process in which communities pursue shared aspirations of well-being. The framework positions Cooperative Extension and community partners to align asset-based, community-focused programming with well-being-aligned initiatives.
Read MoreQuantitatively understanding the socio-economic characteristics of an area conveys important information on its capacity for financial self-sufficiency, resistance to economic shocks, and overall quality of living. In this report, we provide key socio-economic information on the states of the North Central region of the United States, with a more careful look at Indiana.
Read MoreMeasuring employment fluctuations reveals essential information about the economy, particularly when compared with the responses of different areas in the same time frame. For an essential industry like agriculture, observing trends in wages and employment shares conveys important information on the labor market in the short, medium, and long term. In this brief, we analyze key labor market data using data from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Read MoreIn this report, we show details on Indiana’s caring stress index (CSI) at the county level in both 2013 and 2023, and a map of its county-level changes between these two years.
Read MoreUsing data from the 2024 NCR-Stat Baseline Survey, this article compares Indiana’s community vitality and well-being to the North Central Region across 14 indices. Indiana trails the NCR on most measures, with institutional trust showing the largest gap (3.16 vs. 3.29). Rural-urban differences are most pronounced in community satisfaction, where rural Indiana (3.44) scores well below urban Indiana (3.64), the largest within-state gap across all indices.
Read MoreMichael Langemeier presented at the Ag Engage Conference in Bloomington on February 19, 2026, on valuing sweat equity and adding a person to the farm.
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