Project description
Addressing the origins of health inequalities
Health inequalities originate from many different childhood environments, conditions, and shocks. Our understanding of the developmental origins of early life inequalities remains limited. What is certain is that there is an urgent need to formulate preventative health policies and interventions enabling a fair, healthy future for our societies. The EU-funded DEVORHBIOSHIP project will study the interplay between genes and environments in different stages of development utilising a combination of high-quality data, sensitive measures, and robust identification strategies together with econometric techniques for observational and experimental data. The results will have direct policy implications for the formulation of new cost-effective interventions promoting health.
Objective
What are the origins of inequalities in health? A recent literature in economics has established causal impacts of early life shocks, investments and policies on lifelong health. However, several unknowns remain. The mechanisms through which shocks, investments, and policies interact are just beginning to be understood. Our knowledge of sensitive periods is imprecise. Little is also known about the impact of shocks and policies across different ages. Commonly used health capital measures, such as birth weight, lack sensitivity and specificity. The interplay between genes and environments in the formation of health inequalities is poorly understood.
To fill these gaps, I will build on insights from my earlier work, and use a combination of high-quality data, more sensitive measures, robust identification strategies and richer models to untangle the complex interactions between biology, shocks, investments and policies.
First, I will investigate causal impacts and mechanisms of two public health policies on child health and development: medical treatments for pregnancy complications and prenatal home visiting programmes. Second, I will examine the effects of two environmental shocks (pollution and influenza) on the formation of early health and human capital, and their interplay with maternal investments in nutrition. Third, I will study interactions between shocks, investments and policies from birth to adulthood, to understand the dynamic interplay between SES and health. Throughout, I will explore their interactions with genetic susceptibility or potential.
I will analyse administrative records, registries linked to survey data, cohort data with biomarkers; and a randomized controlled trial. I will use state-of-the-art econometric techniques for observational and experimental data. My findings will have direct policy implications and will help understand whether and to which extent early life interventions are a cost-effective mean to promote health.
Fields of science
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic health
- social scienceseconomics and businesseconomics
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusesinfluenza
- medical and health sciencesclinical medicineobstetricsfetal medicine
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesnutrition
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
WC1E 6BT London
United Kingdom