| Seminars
Upcoming Seminars
The PGDA Seminar Series is open to students and faculty from across Harvard University. The invited guest speaker presents his or her research on aging and will be available for questions and discussion. Speakers include Harvard faculty, as well as faculty from other institutions.
All seminars are held at the:
Center for Population and Development Studies
9 Bow Street, 1st Floor Conference Room
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-496-4060 | Fax: 617-495-5418
Email: kfabella@hsph.harvard.edu
PGDA 2008-2009 Seminar Series
Disempowered by Whom? Inlaws' Influence on Decision Making in Indian Families
Reeve Vanneman - Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland
Date: September 15, 2008
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Abstract: The now-frequent use of decision-making questions in household surveys has greatly enhanced our understanding of intra-household power relations. While much of the research interest in these questions has focused on the relative influence of the husband or the wife in household decision-making, in developing societies where extended families are common, senior men and women in the household often have important voices. Our analysis disentangles the extent to which a woman is being disempowered by her husband versus others (usually her in-laws) in her household. We use data from a new 41,554 household survey, the India Human Development Survey 2005, to examine how a woman's lack of power is a function of both gender and generation. Age, a senior position in the extended family, and landlessness are all related to more decision-making power for both the wife and her husband. So, young women in landed households are disempowered more by their inlaws than by their husbands. Labor force participation and endogamy, on the other hand, strengthen her say in decision-making relative to both her husband and her senior in-laws. By ignoring the full dynamics of power distributions within a family, we may be conflating inequalities of gender with those of generation and thereby mis-specifying our models of empowerment.
Sobering Up: The Impact of the 1985-1988 Russian Anti-Alcohol Campaign on Child Health
Andrea Balan-Cohen - Assistant Professor of Economics, Tufts University
Date: October 27, 2008
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Abstract: This paper estimates the impact of parental alcohol consumption on child health by taking advantage of a unique shock to alcohol supply: the 1985 to 1988 alcohol prohibition campaign in Russia. This campaign was temporally short lived, and resulted in large amounts of exogenous geographic variation in its intensity and
effectiveness. I construct a new data set that combines the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey with regional data on alcohol consumption. Using both a differences-in-differences approach, as well as instrumental variables methods, I find significant improvements in child height, immunization rates, and chronic conditions among children born during prohibition who also lived in regions with effective
anti-alcohol campaigns. This confirms the effect of investments during a child’s fetal period and first two years of life on long-term health measures,and demonstrates a potential positive effect of suppressing parental access to alcohol. Furthermore, evidence from vaccination rates suggests that the positive effect of prohibition on child health occurred through improvements in parental time, rather than income resources.
Do Family Planning Programs Promote Development?: Evidence from a Long Term Social Experiment in Matlab, Bangladesh, 1977-1996
Paul Schultz - Malcolm K. Brachman Professor Emeritus of Economics, Yale University
Date: November 10, 2008
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Demographic change, Human Capital, and the Demand for Housing. British Evidence
Thies Lindenthal - Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Economics, Maastricht University
Date: December 8, 2008
Time: 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
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