CURRICULUM VITAE
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Immigrant and refugee studies
- Immigration policies as social determinants of health
- Poverty and socio-economic mobility
- Asset building
- Social policy
CONTACT INFORMATION
y.zeng@wustl.edu
Yingying Zeng is a PhD in social work at the Brown School of Washington University in St. Louis and a research associate at the Center for Social Development.
Yingying’s research is focused on economic wellbeing, health disparities, and socio-economic mobility among disadvantaged populations. Yingying’s dissertation, titled “Examining U.S. Immigrants’ Experience of Asset Building: Implications for Asset-Based Policies,” examines immigrants’ wellbeing with a focus on their asset accumulation in the United States. Specifically, she analyzes the role of legal statuses upon arrival and access to formal banks in determining immigrant asset ownership and wealth trajectories between children of immigrants and native-born parents.
Yingying is involved in multiple research projects at the nexus of inequality, financial wellbeing, and policy. One of the recent projects includes examining the effects of state-mandated financial education programs on young adults’ financial health, which is supported by the National Endowment for Financial Education (NEFE) and Knology. Other projects include examining the long-term effects of Child Develop Accounts on adolescents’ behavioral health, the health effects of family separation among U.S. immigrants, and social drives that marginalize refugees with disabilities in both transition and resettlement countries.
TEACHING INTERESTS
- Policy analysis and evaluation
- Research methods
- Advanced statistical methods
- Social work with immigrants and refugees
- Community development and practice
LITTLE KNOWN FACTS
Yingying is an amateur photographer and she believes that a good picture speaks louder than thousands of words.