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About the Author(s)

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Seema Jayachandran is an associate professor of economics at Northwestern University and a research associate in the NBER Development Economics and Health Care Programs.

Jayachandran's recent work focuses on gender equality in developing countries. She also is currently working on projects related to environmental conservation, health, labor markets, and education.

Jayachandran co-chairs the health sector of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab and serves on the board of the Bureau for Research and Analysis of Economic Development. She is a reviewing editor at Science and an associate editor for the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives.

Jayachandran received her Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University in 2004. She also holds an M.A. in physics from Harvard, an M.A. in physics and philosophy from the University of Oxford, and an S.B. in electrical engineering from MIT. Prior to joining Northwestern, she was on the faculty at Stanford University from 2006–11 and a Robert Wood Johnson Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley from 2004–06. She is a recipient of an NSF CA-REER Award and a Sloan Research Fellowship.

Endnotes

1. S. Jayachandran, "The Roots of Gender Inequality in Developing Countries," NBER Working Paper 20380, August 2014, and Annual Review of Economics, 7, 2015, pp. 63-88.   Go to ⤴︎
2. There is a growing literature that discusses how cultural norms are shaped by economic forces, then linger even after the economic environment has transformed. See, for example, A. F. Alesina, P. Giuliano, N. Nunn, "On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough," NBER Working Paper 17098, May 2011, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, 128(2), 2013, pp. 469-530.   Go to ⤴︎
3. S. Jayachandran and R. Pande, "Why Are Indian Children So Short?," NBER Working Paper 21036, March 2015, and American Economic Review, 107(9), 2017, pp. 2600-29.   Go to ⤴︎
4. S. Jayachandran and I. Kuziemko, "Why Do Mothers Breastfeed Girls Less Than Boys? Evidence and Implications for Child Health in India," NBER Working Paper 15041, June 2009, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126(3), 2011, pp. 1485-538.   Go to ⤴︎
5. A. Sen, "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing," The New York Review of Books, 37(20), 1990, pp. 61-6.   Go to ⤴︎
6. S. Jayachandran, "Fertility Decline and Missing Women," NBER Working Paper 20272, July 2014, and American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 9(1), 2017, pp. 118-39.   Go to ⤴︎
7. D. Dhar, T. Jain, and S. Jayachandran, "Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Attitudes: Evidence from India," NBER Working Paper 21429, July 2015.   Go to ⤴︎
8. R. Heath and S. Jayachandran, "The Causes and Consequences of Increased Female Education and Labor Force Participation in Developing Countries," NBER Working Paper 22766, October 2016, and forthcoming in S. Averett, L. Argys, and S. Hoffman, eds., Oxford Handbook on the Economics of Women, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018.   Go to ⤴︎
9. E. Field, S. Jayachandran, R. Pande, and N. Rigol, "Friendship at Work: Can Peer Effects Catalyze Female Entrepreneurship?," NBER Working Paper 21093, April 2015, and American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 8(2), 2016, pp. 125–53. Go to ⤴︎

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