UPDATE (June 1, 2022): Randall Akee has recently been named Senior Economist on the White House Council of Economic Advisers!
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I have long admired Professor Randall Akee's commitment to native and indigenous peoples and their health and well-being. His research is sophisticated and rigorous but also clear and relevant for guiding policy and program innovation.
Professor Akee has a recent report that documents the income patterns of mainland and island indigenous populations in the US from 2007-2018 to highlight the longer-term fallout of the Great Recession in 2008. His analysis shows how American Indian/Alaska Natives (AI/AN) and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders (NHPI) varied in wages/income depending on where they lived (homelands or not), with those living outside their homelands generally earning more than those living on self-governing lands. Total personal earnings also widely varied depending on the type of jobs people held, with wages largely coming back to 2007 levels by 2018 but with bumps along the way (see Figure 3 below from Professor Akee's report).
In this report, Professor Akee also discusses the COVID-19 pandemic and its severe impacts on AI/AN and NHPI populations in the US. AI/AN and NHPI populations experienced higher COVID-19 infection and death rates. As Professor Akee states, "[t]he NHPI death rate in California [was] four times higher than it should be based solely on population figures, and the Navajo Nation experienced one of the highest per-capita infection rates in the country. One factor is their over-representation in occupations deemed “essential” during the pandemic, meaning that they were still working, often in close contact with coworkers and the public, before adequate protections were recognized or implemented." Jobs and health, in this case illness and death, are directly related for so many populations in the US.
Here is a teaching supplement for using this material in the classroom.
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