IFS Annual Lecture: Professor Janet Currie (Princeton) - "Life, death, and mental health: How access to care helps children succeed"

Professor Janet Currie, Chair of the Department of Economics at Princeton University, gave the 2018 IFS Annual Lecture on 27 September on the topic of "Life, death, and mental health: How access to care helps children succeed". You can download the slides from her presentation here, or watch a video of Professor Currie discussing her research below.

The U.S. provides a case study of how increasing access to health care prenatally and in early childhood reduces deaths and leads to long-term improvements in child and young adult outcomes. While inequality in mortality increased in the U.S. among older adults, it declined among children and approached the low levels seen in countries such as Canada.  Improved mental health appears to be an important mechanism, driving better outcomes in surviving children. 

Professor Currie’s research focuses on health and wellbeing, especially of children. She has written about early intervention programs, programs to expand health insurance and improve health care, public housing, and food and nutrition programs. Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in health and access to health care, environmental threats to health, and mental health.

Professor Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the Director of Princeton’s Center for Health and Wellbeing. She also co-directs the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

She has served as the Vice President of the American Economics Association, is on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science and has served as the Editor of the Journal of Economic Literature and on the editorial board of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.