Susan W. Parker | |
---|---|
Occupation(s) | Economist and academic |
Academic background | |
Education | B.A. Economics and Mathematics M.A. Economics M.Phil. Economics Ph.D. Economics |
Alma mater | Franklin and Marshall College Yale University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | University of Maryland |
Website | https://susanwparker.com/ |
Susan W. Parker is an economist and academic. She is a professor at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland where she also serves as the associate director of the Maryland Population Research Center. [1]
Parker's research focuses on education and health in developing countries and the evaluation of programs and public policies,with an emphasis on conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs and targeting. She has conducted projects on the impact of health insurance,standardized test integrity,and mobile banking in underserved populations. [2]
Parker has held editorial positions,including serving as both an Associate Editor and Co-Editor for the Latin American Economic Review. [3] She contributed as a Guest Editor for the Special Issue on The Mexican Economy in Estudios Economicos [4] and has been serving on the board of directors for World Development [5] as well as the Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy. [6]
Parker completed her undergraduate education,earning a B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Franklin and Marshall College in 1987. She continued her education by obtaining an M.A. and M.Phil. in Economics in 1990 and attained her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1993. [7] She was also the Rockefeller Postdoctoral Fellow at El Colegio de Mexico from 1993 to 1995. [8]
Parker's academic career started in 2000 as an assistant professor at the Center for Teaching and Research in Economics (CIDE) where she served her appointment as an associate professor from 2003 to 2009 and held the position of Professor until 2018. [9] In 2011,she became a Research Affiliate at the Population Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania [10] and served as a Faculty Associate at the Maryland Population Research Center in 2017. She has been serving as an Affiliate Faculty member at the Latin American Studies Center [11] and holds the appointment of Professor at the School of Public Policy in University of Maryland. [12] She was appointed Honorary Professor in the Department of Economics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in 2023. [13]
Parker has been serving as an associate director for the Maryland Population Research Center since 2021. [14]
From 1995 to 2000,Parker served as an Advisor to the Director of Finance at Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social and held the position of Chief Economic Advisor to the Director at Progresa:Programa de Educacion,Salud,y Nutricion. She briefly worked as a Research Associate at the International Food Policy Research Institute [15]
Parker's research spans a wide range of subjects,including behavioral and community health,education,policy and management,and international affairs. [16]
A main area of Parker's research has been the evaluation of outcomes of the Mexican CCT program. She has studied the development,evaluation,and outcomes of the same program and highlighted how this research has contributed to the implementation of CCT initiatives in over sixty countries. [17] Her investigation of the educational outcomes of the Progresa program focused on the impacts of educational scholarships and health components on children. The research also demonstrated how early nutritional interventions improved educational performance and increased the number of completed grades in schooling. [18] She alongside Jere R. Behrman and Petra E. Todd assessed the medium-term impact of Progresa and employed both experimental as well as non-experimental methods to evaluate the program's effects on education and employment. The findings revealed positive outcomes,including reduced work among younger individuals,increased employment among older girls,and transitions from agricultural to nonagricultural jobs. [19]
In 2023,Parker examined the medium-term effects of Progresa on demographic outcomes by analyzing nationwide administrative data indicating a significant decline in teenage fertility and highlighting the program's influence on family planning outcomes. [12] She along with Tom Vogl investigated the long-term effects of childhood exposure to Progresa and found lasting impacts on women's outcomes in early adulthood,including educational attainment,geographic mobility,labor market performance,and household living standards. [20]
Parker has explored the nuances of human behavior in various contexts,shedding light on issues surrounding poverty alleviation,and social program participation. In collaborative research on misreporting in a poverty alleviation program,she alongside César Martinelli revealed that underreporting is common for items associated with desirability and social status. The study also calculated the costs of lying and embarrassment for different goods,showing that the embarrassment cost of not owning an item corresponds to its ownership rate among households. [21] In her research on social program participation,she proposed a model of the participation process,highlighting that decisions at each stage are influenced by expectations about subsequent stages and that knowledge about the program significantly impacts participation outcomes. [22] In another study,she investigated student cheating and cash incentives using data from a policy intervention,employing methods to quantify the extent of cheating. [23]
Parker has conducted various studies on health spending and performance incentives dynamics in education. In her research on household health spending in Mexico,she worked together with Rebeca Wong and discovered that lower-income,uninsured households are highly responsive to income changes,resulting in reduced healthcare expenses during economic challenges. [24] She investigated Mexico's Seguro Popular health insurance program using Mexican Health and Aging Study data and revealed significant improvements in healthcare utilization as well as diagnostic tests. Her findings suggested that enhanced healthcare access in underserved areas can amplify the effects of health insurance. [25] With Carla Pederzini,she presented empirical models to explore the determinants of education in Mexico and delved into the factors impacting the educational outcomes in context of gender differences. [26] In 2015,she collaborated with Jere R. Behrman,Petra E. Todd,and Kenneth I. Wolpin to conduct experiments with three performance incentive programs in Mexican high schools and revealed how offering incentives to students,teachers,and administrators has significant impact in enhancing academic performance. [27]
A parent education program is a course that can be followed to correct and improve a person's parenting skills. Such courses may be general,covering the most common issues parents may encounter,or specific,for infants,toddlers,children and teenagers. These courses may also be geared towards parents who are considering having a child,or adopting one,or are pregnant.
Conditional cash transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. The government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools,getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office,receiving vaccinations,or the like. CCTs seek to help the current generation in poverty,as well as breaking the cycle of poverty for the next through the development of human capital. Conditional cash transfers could help reduce feminization of poverty.
Oportunidades is a government social assistance program in Mexico founded in 2002,based on a previous program called Solidaridad,created in 1988 and renamed Progresa in 1997. It is designed to target poverty by providing cash payments to families in exchange for regular school attendance,health clinic visits,and nutrition support. Oportunidades is credited with decreasing poverty and improving health and educational attainment in regions where it has been deployed. Key features of Oportunidades include:
Joshua David Angrist is an Israeli–American economist and Ford Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Angrist,together with Guido Imbens,was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2021 "for their methodological contributions to the analysis of causal relationships".
Impact evaluation assesses the changes that can be attributed to a particular intervention,such as a project,program or policy,both the intended ones,as well as ideally the unintended ones. In contrast to outcome monitoring,which examines whether targets have been achieved,impact evaluation is structured to answer the question:how would outcomes such as participants' well-being have changed if the intervention had not been undertaken? This involves counterfactual analysis,that is,"a comparison between what actually happened and what would have happened in the absence of the intervention." Impact evaluations seek to answer cause-and-effect questions. In other words,they look for the changes in outcome that are directly attributable to a program.
Edward "Ted" Andrew Miguel is an American development economist currently serving as the Oxfam Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics at the University of California,Berkeley. He is the founder and faculty director of the Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA),a Berkeley-based hub for research on development economics.
Social determinants of health in Mexico are factors that influence the status of health among certain populations in Mexico. These factors consist of circumstances in which people grow,live,work,and age,as well as the systems put in place to deal with illnesses.
Hilary Hoynes is an economist and Haas Distinguished Chair in Economic Disparities at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. She studies the impact of tax and transfer programs on low-income families,particularly single parent families. She was the 2014 winner of the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award from the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. She has been a co-editor of the American Economic Review,co-editor of American Economic Journal:Economic Policy,Associate editor of Journal of Public Economics and Journal of Economic Perspectives.
Mexico has sought to ensure food security through its history. Yet,despite various efforts,Mexico continues to lack national food and nutrition strategies that secure food security for the people. As a large country of more than 100 million people,planning and executing social policies are complex tasks. Although Mexico has been expanding its food and nutrition programs that have been expected,and to some degree,have contributed to increases in health and nutrition,food security,particularly as it relates to obesity and malnutrition,still remains a relevant public health problem. Although food availability is not the issue,severe deficiencies in the accessibility of food contribute to insecurity.
Victor Chaim Lavy is an Israeli economist and professor at the University of Warwick and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests include labour economics,the economics of education,and development economics. Lavy belongs to the most prominent education economists in the world.
Jere Richard Behrman is an American economist and the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He belongs to the world's most prominent development and education economists and human capital scholars,with a strong focus on Central and South America.
Mark Richard Rosenzweig is an economist and the Frank Altschul Professor of International Economics at Yale University,where he also directs the Economic Growth Center. Rosenzweig belongs to the world's most prominent agricultural and development economists,and is one of the leading scholars on the subjects of the economics of insurance and migration.
Felipe Barrera-Osorio is a Colombian economist and associate professor of Public Policy,Education and Economics at Peabody College of Education and Human Development at Vanderbilt University. Barrera-Osorio's work on the economics of education earned him the Juan Luis Londono Medal,Colombia's equivalent to the John Bates Clark Medal in 2008.
John Hoddinott,is a Canadian economist and the Howard Edward Babcock Professor of Food,Nutrition and Public Policy at Cornell University. In 2002–2015,Hoddinott was a Deputy Division Director at the International Food Policy Research Institute. Since 1997,he has been a research associate at the Centre for the Study of African Economies at the University of Oxford. Hoddinott received his DPhil in 1989 from Oxford University.
Anna Aizer is a labor and health economist,who currently serves as the Maurice R. Greenberg Professor of Economics at Brown University where she is also a Faculty Associate at the Population Studies and Training Center. Her research focuses on child health and well-being,in particular the effect of societal factors and social issues on children's health.
Adriana Lleras-Muney is a Colombian-American economist. She is currently a professor in the Department of Economics at UCLA. She was appointed as Associate Editor for the Journal of Health Economics in 2014,and she was elected as one of the six members of the American Economic Association Executive committee in 2018. Her research focuses on socio-economic status and health with a particular emphasis on education,income,and economic development. In 2017,she was received the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers from President Obama.
Lisa Cameron is an Australian economist currently working as a Professional Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne.
Petra Persson is a Swedish economist and Assistant Professor in Economics at Stanford University. Persson is best known for her work in Public and Labour Economics where her research focuses on the interactions between family decisions and the policy environment. Specifically,Persson's research agenda is centered on studying government policy,family wellbeing,and informal institutions.
Petra Elisabeth (Crockett) Todd is an American economist whose research interests include labor economics,development economics,microeconomics,and econometrics. She is the Edward J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania,and is also affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania Population Studies Center,the Human Capital and Equal Opportunity Global Working Group (HCEO),the IZA Institute of Labor Economics and the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Barbara Wolfe is an economist and the Richard A. Easterlin Professor of Economics,Population Health Sciences,and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.