Monitoring Health Deprivation in North Carolina Counties

Abstract

As an honors student at East Carolina University (ECU), I am working on a Signature Honors Project (SHP) alongside my mentor, Dr. Lester Zeager, a professor in the Department of Economics. Together, we are working on a project to develop an online multidimensional poverty (deprivation) dashboard for the 100 counties of North Carolina. Until recent years, economists have treated poverty as one-dimensional. Poverty was exclusively measured as income deprivation, either in an absolute sense characterized by insufficient income to afford basic necessities such as food and shelter, or in a relative sense characterized as exclusion from the mainstream of society. Over the past few years, economists and other scholars have broadened their perception of deprivation to incorporate non-income dimensions of welfare, including health (public, oral, and mental) which connects most closely with my interests as a biology major and aspiring dentist.