The Economics club at Eastern Michigan University held a forum Friday for students and those interested in economics. Satis Devkota, Ph.D. candidate from Wayne State University, presented at the forum for more than 40 students and a handful of professors listening in to observe and question the guest speaker.
Lance Vought, president of the Economics club, said, “This is the taste of the setting. If you go to a conference, this is how it is. The professional setting that we aren’t exposed to.”
Vought said most of his peers in the Economics department don’t get to see this side of the Economics club: “Most of our professors perform their work somewhere else.”
Strong Hall was full with students dressed in business casual, some drinking coffee from their canisters and others munching on pizza and soda provided by the Economics club.
Overall, Vought saw the event as a success.
He said, “It probably went over a lot of people’s heads, but I thought it was interesting.”
Devkota’s forum was a basic economic perspective of what effect income and education have on inequality in the utilization of health care. He didn’t speak specifically about the United States current health care status, but he did touch on a paper he did officially titled “Effects of Increase in Average Income and Education on Income Related Inequality in Physician Service Utilization.”
The material he covered was more about the “inequality” and “disparity” of different cultures and how increased income and increased education can help each culture’s low-income and low-educated families.
The material explored in Devkota’s forum showed light to a similar obstacle the United States is facing within its health care system.
He asked his audience: “Is it fair that poor, pregnant women use gynecologist services less than rich women? No, it isn’t. They can use gynecologist services because they can afford it. The two quantities are not equal.”
He touched upon different countries having different cultures, thus resulting in different physician services utilized between the countries.
One of the guests present to show support at the forum was Allen C. Goodman, Wayne State professor and Director of Graduate Studies Department of Economics.
“Devkota is my grad student,” Goodman said. “Yaya came and spoke to us. He asked me to come out with him, so I came out and showed mutual support.”
Mehmet Yaya, a Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Economics, invited the speaker and his support to host the Economics club’s first event of the semester.
“I liked it,” Goodman said. “I was amazed by it. It would be hard for us to fill a room on a Friday in Wayne.”
Yaya saw the event as a success as well. He said more events are still to come, and the Economics club can be found as a group on facebook.com.
The Student Government elections made its way into the end of the forum. After Devkota finished explaining to the audience of why it is important to understand inequality matters in the developing and transitional economics, a couple of student body electives spoke about their campaign.
Jelani McGadney and Jeff Chicoine talked about why they should be elected student body President and Vice President. The elections will be March 30-31.
The Economics club’s next event will be an award ceremony 3 p.m. April 4 at the Student Center.
