616 PCPSE, 133 South 36th Street
Sánchez, Alan, Marta Favara, Margaret Sheridan, and Jere Behrman. 2022. "How Early Nutrition and Foundational Cognitive Skills Interconnect? Evidence from Two Developing Countries." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-101.
Lopez, Jennifer, Jere Behrman, Santiago Cueto, Marta Favara, and Alan Sánchez. 2022. "Late-Childhood Foundational Cognitive Skills Predict Educational Outcomes Through Adolescence and Into Young Adulthood: Evidence from Ethiopia and Peru." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-100.
Freund, Richard, Marta Favara, Catherine Porter, and Jere Behrman. 2022. "Social Protection and Foundational Cognitive Skills During Adolescence: Evidence from a Large Public Works Programme." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2022-99.
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics
Professor of Sociology
Ph.D., Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1966
I am an international researcher in empirical microeconomics, labor economics, human resources (early childhood development, education, health, and nutrition, project evaluation, economic demography, incentive systems and household behaviors. The unifying dimension of much of my research is to improve empirical knowledge of the determinants of and the impacts of human resources given unobserved factors such as innate health and ability, the functioning of various institutions such as households and imperfect markets, and information imperfections.
In May 2017, I was awarded the Irene B. Taeuber Award “in recognition of an unusually original or important contribution to the scientific study of population, or for an accumulated record of exceptionally sound and innovative research.” I accepted invitations with over 40 national/international organizations as a keynote or invited speaker and have held leadership roles in numerous lifecourse focused projects and organizations including the National Academy of Sciences, National Research Council Committee on Population, and NIH/NICHD National Advisory Council. I have collaborated with over 250 researchers since 2012 on publications, research grants, national and international conferences, meetings and workshops. I am currently a mentor/investigator with early career investigator Sharon Wolf (Assistant Professor, Education and PSC Associate) on a recently awarded grant funded through The British Academy Early Childhood Development Programme full projects, so far 85 publications, seven opportunities for mentoring post docs. A snapshot of my career includes: principal investigator on over seventy research projects funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (twenty-three grants), U.S. National Science Foundation (thirteen grants), and a number of other governmental and foundation sources and have published over 500 scholarly articles and book chapters in addition to over 35 books.
My research relates to the following three PARC themes: Health Disparities in Aging, Global Aging and Health, and Early Life-Conditions and Older Adult Health, Behavior and Well-being, with some of my recent research also relating to the Cognition and Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementia (ADRD) theme. I bring to the PARC a number of strengths: (1) Extensive experience in interdisciplinary data collection and research collaboration on a range of topics pertaining to health and education over the life cycle with particular emphasis on the determinants of early childhood development and the longer-run implications of early childhood development into adolescence and beyond in developing country contexts. (2) Expertise and considerable experience in data collection, modeling and estimation approaches to permit inferences about sociodemographic relations. (3) Active research participation not only in economics and demography but also in the nexus among the social sciences, health, nutrition, and program evaluation.
