Contributor : Profile
Diane is a demographer who studies health, nutrition, sanitation, and social inequality in India. She is an assistant professor of Sociology & Population Research at the University of Texas at Austin, a visiting researcher at the Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi, and she co-directs a research non-profit called r.i.c.e., a research institute for compassionate economics, which aims to inform policies relating to child health in India.
Posts by Diane Coffey
What the Swachh Bharat Mission did not change
On the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and 5th anniversary of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), Coffey and Spears discuss findings from a field survey about changes in open defecation in rura...
- Diane Coffey Dean Spears
- 02 October, 2019
- Perspectives
भारत में बच्चों की लंबाई: नए आंकड़े, परिचित चुनौतियां
भारत के बच्चे दुनिया के सबसे नाटे बच्चों में आते हैं। देश में बच्चों की लंबाई संबंधी जटिलता और विविधता की जांच के लिए इस आलेख में राष्ट्रीय पारिवारिक स्वास्थ्य सर्वेक्षण-4 (एनएफएचएस-4) के आंकड़ों का उ...
- Diane Coffey Dean Spears
- 06 मार्च, 2019
- लेख
Child height in India: New data, familiar challenges
Children in India are among the shortest in the world. This article uses the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4) data to examine the complexity and diversity of child height in the country. It find...
- Diane Coffey Dean Spears
- 11 February, 2019
- Articles
Using mobile phones to measure discrimination
One aspect of human well-being that has often been overlooked in survey research on low- and middle-income countries is the extent to which prejudice and discrimination diminish social welfare. This a...
- Diane Coffey Payal Hathi Nazar Khalid Nidhi Khurana Amit Thorat
- 09 January, 2019
- Articles
Despite improvements in child health, why do so many newborns still die?
The ‘Million Death Study’ shows that the death rate of under-five children in India dropped from about 90 per 1,000 to about 47 during 2000-2015. However, improvements in death rates in the first ...
- Diane Coffey
- 02 January, 2018
- Perspectives
Why doesn’t anybody know if Swachh Bharat Mission is succeeding?
In 2014, the Prime Minister announced a goal of eliminating open defecation by 2019. In this article, Coffey and Spears, contend that now almost two-thirds of the way through the Swachh Bharat Mission...
- Diane Coffey Dean Spears
- 10 July, 2017
- Perspectives
Maternity entitlements for healthier babies
The National Food Security Act, 2013 provides for a maternity benefit of not less than Rs. 6,000 for every pregnant and lactating mother in India. In this article, Coffey and Hathi explain why materni...
- Diane Coffey Payal Hathi
- 07 July, 2016
- Perspectives
Angus Deaton's ideas for India
In a tribute to Angus Deaton, the 2015 Nobel laureate in Economics, Diane Coffey and Dean Spears – former graduate students of Prof. Deaton at Princeton University – review some of his work on th...
- Diane Coffey Dean Spears
- 30 October, 2015
- Perspectives
Is maternal health in India worse than we thought?
Since India does not have a national system to monitor health during pregnancy, the fraction of women of child-bearing age who are underweight - 35.5% - is used as a proxy for the fraction of pre-pre...
- Diane Coffey
- 12 August, 2015
- Articles
Switching to sanitation in South Asia: A study of health technology adoption (a seed study)
Open defecation in rural India presents a puzzle: India has far higher open defecation rates than other developing regions where people are poorer, literacy rates are lower, and water is more scarce.
- Diane Coffey
- 31 October, 2014
- IGC Research on India
Culture, religion and open defecation in rural north India
Open defecation in rural India is a human development emergency that is causing infant deaths, child stunting, and widespread infectious diseases. This column presents surprising qualitative and quan...
- Diane Coffey
- 14 August, 2014
- Articles
Short-term migration and child welfare
While much has been said about the poor working and living conditions of short-term migrants, relatively little is known of the impact of short-term migration on child welfare. This column finds that ...
- Diane Coffey
- 07 October, 2013
- Articles