You're viewing a specific archive. Looking for something and want to search by keyword or just take a general look at ALL our resources? Click Search below!
Search our entire resource library
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 More about Do Federal Medicaid Outlays Cause Redistribution Across U.S. Counties? Evidence from the ACAThis 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 More about A Picture of Self-Employed Women in the MidwestMental 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 More about State of Employees’ Mental Health in Rural AmericaImmigrant 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 More about Immigration Enforcement, Labor Outcomes and Consumer Welfare: Evidence from U.S. Meat and Poultry Processing PlantsThis 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 More about From Assets to Well-being: A Conceptual Framework for Community VitalityQuantitatively 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 More about The Economic Situation of the North Central Region and a Zoom in on Indiana: An Analysis Using the NCR-Stat Baseline SurveyMeasuring 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 More about Employment and Wage Trends in the U.S., the Midwest and Indiana: Overall and in AgricultureIn 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 More about Caring Stress Index: What is Happening in Indiana and the Midwest?Using 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 More about How is Indiana Doing? Community Vitality and Well-being in the North Central RegionMichael Langemeier presented at the Ag Engage Conference in Bloomington on February 19, 2026, on valuing sweat equity and adding a person to the farm.
Read More about Valuing Sweat Equity and Adding a Person to the Farm, Ag Engage Conference