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The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation/IIE Dissertation Fellowship (Africa) |
About Participants |
The Fellowship Awardees for 2009 are:
- Chalachew Desta Getahun, PhD candidate in Geography at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He earned a BA in Geography at Kotebe College. The title of his dissertation is "Population and Development in Ethiopia: Investigating the Impact of Fertility Trends on Household Economy." He will investigate to what extent and how population change (in terms of fertility) influences economic wellbeing and poverty conditions at individual and household levels in Ethiopia.
- Jonas Hjort, PhD candidate in Economics at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned a MA in International Development Economics from Yale University and a BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics. The title of his dissertation is "Female Empowerment, Intra-Household Decision-Making, Fertility and Economic Development in East Africa." He will look at the effect of female employment on (fertility and other) intra-household decision-making, and ensuing income trends.
- Zoe McLaren, PhD candidate in Economics and Policy at the University of Michigan. She double majored in Government and Environmental Biology at Dartmouth College. The title of her dissertation is "The economic impact of HIV in South Africa." She seeks to understand how access to anti-retroviral drugs affect employment outcomes in South Africa and the employment impact of being HIV+.
- Scott McNiven, PhD candidate at the University of California at Davis in Agriculture and Resource Economics. He has a MS in Agriculture and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a BA in Anthropology from Grinnell College. The title of his dissertation is "Social Networks and the Diffusion of Information and Technology in a Biofortification Program in Uganda." He will study how social networks can promote child and maternal health.
- Plamen Valentino Nikolov, PhD candidate in Health Economics at Harvard University. He has a MA in International Economics from Johns Hopkins University and a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Ohio Wesleyan University. The title of his dissertation is "Vitamin deficiency in utero and schooling attainment in Tanzania." He will examine how reductions in vitamin deficiency (B6, B12, and folic acid) in utero affect child schooling attainment in Tanzania. To execute this strategy, he will use data from a previous medical randomized trial.
- Nkang Moses Nkang, PhD candidate in Agricultural Economics at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. He also earned a BA and MS in Economics at the University of Calabar, Nigeria. The title of his dissertation is "Demographic Change, Economic Growth, Income Distribution and Poverty in Nigeria: A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis." He will examine to what extent does demographic change impact economic growth, income distribution and poverty in the Nigerian context.
- Gil Shapira, PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He has a BA in Economics from Columbia University. The title of his dissertation is "How Beliefs about HIV Affect Fertility, Infant and Child Mortality, and Child Schooling Decisions in Rural Malawi." His research interests focus on understanding how individual beliefs about one's own health status affect critical reproduction and intergenerational human capital investment decisions in Malawi, a sub-Saharan African country with high HIV prevalence.
- Joshua Wilde, PhD candidate in Economics at Brown University. He has a BA from Brigham Young University in Economics. The title of his dissertation is "Essays on Population and Economic Development." He will examine the effect on population size on income per capita in the presence of fixed factors and the effect of fertility decline on income per capita.
Hewlett/IIE 2008 Selected Fellows:
The fellowship awardees of the 2008 cohort are as follows:
- Joseph Babigumira, PhD candidate at the University of Washington. The title of his dissertation is "Economic Impact of Unsafe Induced Abortion in Uganda." He is investigating if unsafe induced abortions lead to negative economic consequences and the extent of the same in Uganda. He is also investigating whether a comprehensive national contraceptive program to prevent unintended pregnancy is cost-effective.
- Winne Fung, PhD candidate at Harvard University. The title of her dissertation is "Intergenerational and Long-Term Effects of Maternal Malnutrition on Children's Health and Economic Outcomes." She is focusing on the causal effects of maternal malnutrition on children's health and economic outcomes, and determining the mechanisms behind such a causal link using evidence from the 1959-61 China Famine and from the Islamic practice of Ramadan fasting.
- Kelly Jones, PhD candidate at UC Berkeley. The title of her dissertation is "The importance of Reproductive Health Services: Lessons from the Global Gag Rule." She is focusing on how the Global Gag Rule changed access to a range of reproductive health services in several African countries and will determine the impacts of these services on child health and development.
- Grace Kumchulesi, PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Cape Town. The title of her dissertation is "Marriage, Labor Supply and Assortative Mating in South Africa." She is investigating if marriages in South Africa follow an assortative pattern by wages or whether they are randomly sorted.
- Adebola Orimadegun, PhD candidate in the Department of Epidemiology, Medical Statistics and Environmental Health at the University of Ibadan. The title of his dissertation is "Economic Cost and Social Consequences of Living with AIDS Orphans on Households in Selected Rural and Urban Communities in South-Western Nigeria: A Cohort Study of Cost Analyses and Coping Strategies." He is examining the microeconomic costs and social consequences of living with an HIV/AIDS orphan on households and how that impacts families.
- Uma Radhakrishnan, PhD candidate at the University of Virginia. The title of her dissertation is "A Dynamic Structural Model of Contraception Use and Employment Sector Choice for Women in Indonesia." She is investigating the impact of the family planning program in Indonesia on labor force participation decisions of women.
- Akintunde Sade Temitope, PhD candidate in Economics at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State Nigeria. The title of her dissertation is "Effects of Mortality and Fertility on Economic Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa (1970 – 2005)." She is investigating the trends and patterns of mortality and fertility rates in Sub-Saharan Africa and examining if the mortality and fertility rates are contributing positively or negatively to the economic growth in that region.
- Gauthier Tshiswaka-Kashalala, PhD candidate in Economics at the University of Pretoria. The title of his dissertation is "Reproductive Health, Labor Outcomes and Pro-Poor Growth in South Africa: A Micro-Simulation." He is examining the causality between reproductive health outcomes and pro-poor growth in South Africa.
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