Vanessa Fry, an associate research professor and interim director of the Idaho Policy Institute, and Saleh Ahmed, an assistant professor, both in the School of Public Service along with Elizabeth Eklund from the University of Arizona, co-authored the most recent Western Research Brief, “Population Growth, Inequality, and the Digital Frontier in the Shadow of the Pandemic in the American West,” published by the Western Rural Development Center at Utah State University. This research brief looks at population growth in the Intermountain West and discusses how an already divided society saw a widening gap between sectors as some businesses, particularly in the service industry, closed while “Zoom Towns” thrived.
