 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Member Information
Jere R. Behrman, PhD
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics
Director of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania
Office Phone: 215-898-7704
Office Fax: 215-573-2057
Email: jbehrman@pop.upenn.edu
Website(s): www.pop.upenn.edu
Education: PhD 1966, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords: Economics, Demography, Human Resources, Health, Nutrition, Education, Household Behavior, Economic Development, Labor Markets
Research and/or Clinical Interests:
Investigating micro aspects of household behaviors as related to human resources (e.g., health, nutrition, education) and how they relate to their market, social and policy contexts, particularly in developing countries.
Summary:
Jere R. Behrman is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Economics and Director of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has been on the faculty since 1965. His research interests are in empirical micro economics, economic development, labor economics, human resources, economic demography and household behaviors. He has published over 230 professional articles and 30 books and monographs on these topics. He has worked as a research consultant with numerous national and international organizations, including the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. He has been the principal investigator/co-principal investigator on over 40 research projects funded by organizations including the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation. He has lectured widely in the U.S. and internationally and has been involved in professional research or lecturing activities in over 40 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America and the Caribbean. He has received various honors, including being selected a Fulbright 40th Anniversary Distinguished Fellow, a Fellow of the Econometric Society, a Guggenheim Foundation Faculty Fellow, and a Ford Foundation Faculty Fellow.
His primary research has been on empirical micro demographic and economic behaviors, primarily in developing countries but with substantial ongoing work through the years on the United States . The hall mark of this research is the effort to better understand various causal relations - including the impact of schooling, health, nutrition, family background, social networks, and policies - on a wide range of demographic and economic outcomes over the life course, through using integrated modeling-estimation approaches that incorporate market imperfections within dynamic contexts and special data. As one example, he was among the pioneers in collecting and analyzing data on twins, which permits control for all shared endowments (genetics, family background) to investigate the nature of intrahousehold allocations and the causal impact of schooling, birth weight and intergenerational transfers over the life course and across generations.
Representative Publications:
Alderman, Harold, Jere R. Behrman and John Hoddinott. "Nutrition, Malnutrition and Economic Growth" in Health and Economic Growth: Findings and Policy Implications, Edited by Guillem López-Casasnovas, Berta Rivera and Luis Currais, Cambridge, MA : MIT Press, 2004.
Behrman, Jere R. and Mark R. Rosenzweig."Returns to Birthweight," Review of Economics and Statistics (forthcoming 2003).
Behrman, Jere R.and Mark R. Rosenzweig."Does Increasing Women's Schooling Raise the Schooling of the Next Generation?" American Economic Review 92:1(March 2002), 323-334.
Behrman, Jere R., Hans-Peter Kohler and Susan Cotts Watkins)."Social Networks and Changes in Contraceptive Use over Time: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study in Rural Kenya," Demography 39:4 (November 2002), 713-737.
Alderman, Harold, Jere R. Behrman, Victor Lavy, and Rekha Menon."Child Health and School Enrollment: A Longitudinal Analysis", Journal of Human Resources 36:1 (Winter 2001), 185-205.
Behrman, Jere R. and James Knowles)."Population and Reproductive Health: An Economic Framework for Policy Evaluation", Population and Development Review 24:4 (December 1998), 697-738.
Behrman, Jere R., Andrew Foster and Mark R. Rosenzweig)."The Dynamics of Agricultural Production and the Calorie-Income Relationship: Evidence from Pakistan ", Journal of Econometrics 77:1 (March 1997), 187-207.
Behrman, Jere R., Mark R. Rosenzweig and Paul Taubman)."Endowments and the Allocation of Schooling in the Family and in the Marriage Market: The Twins Experiment," Journal of Political Economy 102:6 (December 1994), 1131-1174 (reprinted in T. Paul Schultz, ed., Economic Demography, Cheltenham, UK : Edward Elgar Publishing Limited, (in The International Library of Critical Writings in Economics, Mark Blau, Series Editor), 1997.
Behrman, Jere R. and Anil B. Deolalikar."Health and Nutrition" in Hollis B. Chenery and T.N. Srinivasan, eds., Handbook on Development Economics, Vol. 1, Amsterdam : North Holland Publishing Co., 1988, 631-711.
Behrman, Jere R.."Will Developing Country Nutrition Improve with Income? A Case Study for Rural South India " (with Anil B. Deolalikar), Journal of Political Economy 95:3 (June 1987), 492-507.
Behrman, Jere R. and Nancy Birdsall. "The Quality of Schooling: Quantity Alone is Misleading" American Economic Review 73 (December 1983), 928-946.
Behrman, Jere R., Robert A. Pollak and Paul Taubman."Parental Preferences and Provision for Progeny", Journal of Political Economy 90:1 (February 1982), 52-73; reprinted in From Parent to Child: Intrahousehold Allocations and Intergenerational Relations in the United States (with Robert A. Pollak and Paul Taubman), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
"Intergenerational Mobility in Latin America: Deeper Markets and Better Schools Make a Difference" (with Nancy Birdsall and Miguel Szekely) in Nancy Birdsall and Carol Graham, eds., New Markets, New Opportunities? Economic and Social Mobility in a Changing World, Washington, DC : The Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999.
"Social Mobility: Concepts and Measurement in Latin America and the Caribbean " in Nancy Birdsall and Carol Graham, eds., New Markets, New Opportunities? Economic and Social Mobility in a Changing World,, Washington, DC : The Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1999.
"Population and Reproductive Health: An Economic Framework for Policy Evaluation"(with James Knowles), Population and Development Review 24:4 (December 1998), 697-738.
"The Microeconomics of College Choice, Careers, and Wages: Measuring the Impact of Higher Education" (with Lori Kletzer, Michael McPherson and Morton Owen Schapiro), Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 559 (September 1998), 12-23.
"Intra-Household Allocation of Resources: Is There a Gender Bias?" in Population Division, United Nations Secretariat Too Young to Die: Genes or Gender?, New York : /Population Division, United Nations Secretariat, 1998, 223-242.
