Expert Type: Guest Author

Chantel Boyens is a principal policy associate in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute. Boyens holds a B.A. in political science and government from California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo and an M.P.P. from American University.

Sarah Elizabeth Gaither is an assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. Previously, she was the Provost’s Career Enhancement postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. Gaither’s research interests include biracial and social identities, interracial interactions, racial categorizations, and social development. Gaither focuses on how individuals’ social identities and experiences across the lifespan motivate their social perceptions and behaviors, particularly in diverse settings. Her work has appeared in Developmental Science, Journal of Social Issues, and Social Psychological and Personality Science, among others. Gaither received her Ph.D. and M.S. in social psychology from Tufts University, and her B.A. in social welfare from the University of California, Berkeley.

Mónica García-Pérez is a professor of economics at the School of Public Affairs at St. Cloud State University. Her research concentrates on topics of immigration, health economics, and labor economics. García-Pérez also is working on wealth inequality across race/ethnicity and the impact of health shocks. She is a research fellow at the Roy Wilkins Center in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs. She has published her research in economics and interdisciplinary journals such as Demography, American Economic Review, International Education Planning, Review of Black Political Economy, and Journal of Economics, Race, and Policy, among others. García-Pérez is the director of the SCSU Faculty Research Group of Immigrants in Minnesota and currently is the 2020 president of the American Society of Hispanic Economists and a board member of the Annual Health Econometrics Workshop. She received her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland, College Park, her M.S. in economics from University College London, and her B.A. in economics from Universidad Central de Venezuela.