A Driver in Health Outcomes: Developing Discrete Categories of Transport Insecurity.

Alexandra K. Murphy, PhD is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and in the Ford School of Public Policy (by courtesy) and a Faculty Affiliate of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. Murphy’s research draws on ethnographic methods to examine how poverty and inequality are experienced, structured, and reproduced. One line of research investigates the new suburban poverty and has focused on variations in social service responses to rising poverty; how suburban living uniquely shapes the experience of poverty; how suburbs are managing the economic and racial changes they are experiencing; and the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues suburban poverty raises for a sociological understanding of geography and inequality. Another line of research examines the causes and consequences of transportation insecurity among people living below the poverty line. With collaborators, Murphy is co-creator of the Transportation Security Index, the first validated measure of transportation insecurity at the individual level that has been used to generate the first-ever prevalence estimates of transportation insecurity in the U.S.