Anna Jefferson, Ph.D.

Dr. Anna Jefferson has spent her career in policy research, creatively and rigorously applying ethnographic, participatory, and community-based methods to make policy research more person-centered. She is a subject matter expert in guaranteed income, inequality, consumer finance, and U.S. housing policy, and a fluent Spanish speaker. She has worked extensively with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), New York City Mayor’s Office of Economic Opportunity, and a range of philanthropic clients.

Dr. Jefferson’s research emphasizes understanding people’s lived experiences with financial insecurity and policies to mitigate it. Whenever possible, she develops that work in collaboration with people with lived experience. Jefferson currently is the principal investigator and project director of HUD’s first participatory research project, which explores residents’ lived experiences with changes to how their subsidized rent is set. She is co-principal investigator of evaluations of seven guaranteed income programs for Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and the city of Alexandria, Va.

Prior to joining Abt, Dr. Jefferson conducted 20 months of ethnographic research for her dissertation with American homeowners facing foreclosure and participating in the Home Affordable Modification Program and other foreclosure relief programs. Through participant observation and interviews, she found that the threat of foreclosure thwarted attempts at upward mobility and undermined belief in the American dream. She also served for four years as the managing editor of the Gendered Perspectives on International Development, the longest-running peer-reviewed publication on gender and international development.

Expertise

• Qualitative methods
• Project management
• Writing and presentation
• Translating research to practice

Key Projects

• Evaluation of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income Pilots
• Qualitative Exploration for Understanding Rapid Rehousing 
• Update to the Five Principles of Effective Financial Education
• Qualitative Study to Enhance the NYCgov Poverty Measure 
• Family Financial Networks Tool

Publications

• Jefferson, Anna and Hannah Thomas. (2020) Mortgage Journeys: A Video Ethnography of the Homebuying and Mortgage Process. Cityscape 22(1):7-36. 
• Jefferson, Anna. (2015) “Not what it used to be”: Schemas of Class and Contradiction in the Great Recession. Economic Anthropology 2(2):310-325. 
• Joanna Lucio, Anna Jefferson & Laura Peck. (2015) Dreaming the Impossible Dream: Low-Income Families and Their Hopes for the Future, Journal of Poverty.
• Schuetz, Jenny, Jonathan Spader, Jennifer Lewis Buell, Kimberly Burnett, Larry Buron, Alvaro Cortes, Michael DiDomenico, Anna Jefferson, Christian Redfearn, Stephen Whitlow (2015). “Investing in Distressed Communities: Outcomes From the Neighborhood Stabilization Program,” Cityscape 17(2): 279-306.
• Jefferson, Anna. (2013). Narratives of Moral Order in Michigan’s Foreclosure Crisis. City & Society 25(1):92-112.