Emily Fair Oster (born February 14,1980) is an American economist who has served as the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence at Brown University since 2019,where she has been a professor of economics since 2015.[1][2] Her research interests span from development economics and health economics to research design and experimental methodology. Her research was brought to the attention of non-economists through the Wall Street Journal,the book SuperFreakonomics,and her 2007 TED Talk.
Oster is the author of four books,Expecting Better,The Family Firm,[3]The Unexpected,and Cribsheet,which discuss a data-driven approach to decision-making in pregnancy and parenting.[4][5]
Early life
Oster was born on February 14,1980,in New Haven,Connecticut. Her parents,Sharon Oster and Ray Fair,were both professors of economics at Yale University.[6][7] When she was two years old,Oster's parents noticed that she talked to herself in her crib after they left her room. They placed a tape recorder in her room in order to find out what she was saying and passed the tapes on to a linguist and psychologist with whom they were friends. Analysis of Oster's speech showed that her language was much more complex when she was alone than when interacting with adults. This led to her being the subject of a series of academic papers which were collectively published as a compendium in 1989 titled Narratives from the Crib.[8][9]
Oster has been a research associate at the NBER since 2015,where she was a faculty research fellow from 2006 to 2015,and has been an associate editor of the Quarterly Journal of Economics since 2014.[1]
Oster's research focuses generally on development economics and health. In 2005,Oster published a dissertation for her economics Ph.D. from Harvard University,which suggested that the unusually high ratio of men to women in China was partially due to the effects of the hepatitis B virus.[14] "Hepatitis B and the Case of the Missing Women,"[15][9] pointed to findings that suggested areas with high hepatitis B rates tended to have higher male-to female birth ratios. Oster argued that the fact that hepatitis B can cause a woman to conceive male children more often than female,accounted for a bulk of the "missing women" in Amartya Sen's 1990 essay,"More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing."[16] Oster noted that the use of hepatitis B vaccine in 1982 led to a sharp decline in the male-to-female birth ratio.[9] Sen's essay had attributed the "missing women" to societal discrimination against girls and women in the form of the allocation of health,educational,and food resources.[9]
In April 2008,Oster released a working paper "Hepatitis B Does Not Explain Male-Biased Sex Ratios in China" in which she evaluated new data,which showed that her original research was incorrect.[17]Freakonomics author Steven Levitt saw this as a sign of integrity.[18]
In a 2007 TED Talk,Oster discussed the spread of HIV in Africa,applying a cost-benefit analysis to the question of why African men have been slow to change their sexual behavior.[19]
Oster's work on television and female empowerment in India was featured in Steve Levitt's second book,SuperFreakonomics.[20]
In November 2024,the New York Times published "There's a Better Way to Talk about Fluoride,Vaccines,and Raw Milk",an opinion piece by Oster and an associated audio essay,"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Revealed What is Missing in Public Health Messaging." Oster's argument is that if public health agencies were to change the way they communicate to the public,they would likely achieve higher levels of trust in what they are trying to convey,and this would lead to improved health behaviors and reduced illness. She said that public health agencies "typically tell people what to do and what not to do,but they don't regularly explain why" and that these agencies "often fail to prioritize" so that "advice for a range of topics is delivered with the same level of confidence and,seemingly,the same level of urgency." Oster's belief is that providing explanations and context,and noting which pieces of health advice are of greater urgency,would lead to better outcomes.[21][22]
Books
In her book,Expecting Better,published in 2013,Oster criticizes conventional pregnancy customs,taboos and mores. She discusses the data behind common pregnancy practices and argues that many of them are misleading.[23] As of March 2019,the book has sold over 100,000 copies.[24] A revised and updated version of the book was published in 2021.
Her second book,Cribsheet, was published in April 2019 and was a New York Times best seller.[28][29] It evaluates and reviews the research on a variety of parenting topics relating to infants and toddlers,including breastfeeding,safe sleep guidelines,sleep training,and potty training.[30][31] The week of April 28,2019,Cribsheet was also the best selling book in Washington,DC according to the Post.[32]
Her third book,The Family Firm:A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years, applies to school age children. A review discusses the relationship of her parenting approach to more permissive parenting ideas dating back to the pre-Reagan era.[33] Oster suggests that parents run their families like firms in order to maximize their children's' advantage over others.[34]
COVID-19 and schools
Oster was an advocate for opening schools during the coronavirus epidemic,spearheading a project to collect data on the spread of coronavirus in schools,[35] and appearing frequently in media discussing why schools should open. In early October 2020,she wrote an influential and much cited article in The Atlantic entitled "Schools Aren't Super-Spreaders" which inspired numerous articles.[36][37][38] Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and the CDC cited Oster's work as a reason to open schools during the pandemic.[39][40] In August 2020,Oster launched a dashboard compiling information on the spread of COVID-19 in schools. Critics of Oster's dashboard said it had methodological problems that they believe undermine its usefulness.[41]
On May 18,2021,Oster published another piece in The Atlantic titled "Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma",which generated much heated response.[42] The controversy surrounds Oster use of vaccination as an individualistic risk-reward proposition,insinuating that unvaccinated kids are still relatively safe from COVID,and the lack of mention of kids being spreaders of the infections themselves.[42] Critics pointed out such rhetoric may lead the lay audience to wrongly believe there is no urgent need to vaccinate.[42]
In September 2021,Oster launched the COVID-19 School Data Hub which includes information on virtual and in person status of schools across 31 states. According to The New York Times,the data hub is "one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to document how schools operated during the pandemic."[43]
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