Contributor : Profile

Sonia Bhalotra is Professor of Economics at the University of Essex in the UK. Her research is centred upon the creation of human capital. She has active research programmes on the long run benefits of childhood health interventions, educational reform, conflict, the political economy of public service delivery, intergenerational transmission of human capital and poverty, and the dynamics of mortality, fertility and sex selection. Her research on India includes papers on political identity, infant mortality, and Hindu-Muslim differences (in political preferences, son preference, health and education). Sonia’s earlier research concerned child labour and the labour market impacts of economic liberalisation in India. She is currently also analysing cross-country micro-macro data for developing countries and historical data from America, Norway, Denmark and Sweden with the purpose of addressing contemporary policy problems in India and other relatively poor countries.

She holds an M.Phil. and a D.Phil. from Oxford and a B.Sc. from Delhi. She has, for several years, been on the Senior Management Team of the Centre for Market and Public Organisation and the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research, both in Bristol. Her current membership of scientific committees includes the Council of the European Society of Population Economics, the International Review Panel of the Danish Council for Independent Research, the Advisory Board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (Yale), the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Centre for Modern Indian Studies in Gottingen University, the British Academy Area Panel for South Asia, the Assessment Panel for the ESRC Future Research Leaders Scheme and the ESRC Peer Review College. She is a Research Fellow at IZA, CHILD, CSAE and QEH. She has contributed policy relevant research to several international organisations.