Thursday, November 17 / 4PM
HBL – Class of 1947 Room
The Effect of Birth Weight on Cognitive Development: New Evidence from India
Sponsored by India Studies Program and Asian/Asian American Studies Institute
Open to the Public
The fetal origins hypothesis postulates that nutrient deprivation in uterohas a long lasting detrimental effect on child health and cognition development. Using longitudinal data from the Young Lives Survey, this talk will investigate the effect of low birth weight, a proxy for fetal nutrient intake, on cognitive development of children in India. From a policy perspective an intervention that can improve the birth outcomes may have a long lasting impact on the health and education of children and can help human capital accumulation in the long run.
Our guest speaker is SANTOSH KUMAR, who is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economics and International Business at Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA. Before joining SHSU, Dr. Kumar has worked at University of Washington, Seattle and Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (HCPDS). His research focuses on development economics, program evaluation, public health including the exploration of long-term effects of in-utero and early life conditions on human capital in developing countries. Some of his previous works have explored the effect of vaccination, access to road, electricity, microfinance, distance to health facility, access to iodized salt, exposure to drought, and sanitation on development outcomes such as cognition, education, child health in Bhutan and India. His articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals, such as Health Economics, Social Science and Medicine, Applied Economics, Population and Development Review, PLoS ONE, and Journal of Public Health. He has served as consultant for Asian Development Bank, Albanian Development Fund, and IARD. Dr. Kumar holds a MA in Economics from Delhi School of Economics and Ph.D. in Economics from University of Houston, TX, USA.
For more information, contact: Ms Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu