Media
Interview: Prof. Janet Currie shares insights on health economics and policy interventions
As part of her visit to LISER, Prof. Janet Currie (Princeton University) presented ongoing research in the LISER Research Seminar Series (RSS) entitled "Has the Clean Air Act Significantly Reduced Racial Disparities in Particulate Exposure? New Evidence from Satellite Data" (joint with John Voorheis and Reed Walker).
Inequality before Birth Contributes to Health Inequality in Adults
What We Say And What We Do: Why US Investments In Children’s Health Are Falling Short
Published by Health Affairs
This article explores the gap between what Americans say we believe with respect to spending on child health and what we actually do, which falls short of norms in other developed countries. Three possible reasons are identified: a lack of information about the effectiveness of government programs affecting child health, the idea that “investments” in child health should pay for themselves, and ideological preferences that prioritize other goals and that may themselves be rooted in this country’s racial history. These factors are not mutually exclusive, and all may be at play simultaneously.
Biography
Janet Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the Co-director of Princeton's Center for Health and Wellbeing. She also co-directs the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is the in-coming President of the American Society of Health Economics, has served as the Vice President of the American Economics Association, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and of the American Academy of Art and Sciences. Currie is a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Society of Labor Economists, and of the Econometric Society, and has honorary degrees from the University of Lyon and the University of Zurich. She served on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science, as the Editor of the Journal of Economic Literature, and on the editorial board of the Quarterly Journal of Economics (for 25 years).
Currie is a pioneer in the economic analysis of child development. When she began studying human capital formation in infants and children in the early 1990s, it was not routinely considered to be a central part of the economics literature. Now, the crucial role of childhood circumstances in the development of inequality is much studied and widely accepted. Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in health and access to health care, environmental threats to health, and the important role of mental health.