Janet Currie

Janet Currie is a Canadian-American economist. She 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 served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at Princeton from 2014–2018. She also served as the first female Chair of the Department of Economics at Columbia University from 2006–2009. Before Columbia, she taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. She was named one of the top 10 women in economics by the World Economic Forum in July 2015. She was recognized for her mentorship of younger economists with the Carolyn Shaw Bell award from the American Economics Association in 2015. Currie won the NOMIS Distinguished Scientist Award in 2019. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in April 2019.

Currie co-directs the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She is a member of various professional associations including being elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, American Academy of Political and Social Science and the Econometric Society. She is past president of the Society of Labor Economists and of the Eastern Economics Association, the in-coming President of the American Society of Health Economics, and previously served as vice-president of the American Economic Association. She has honorary degrees from the University of Lyon and the University of Zurich. She is also an affiliate of Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, Germany. Currie has served as a member of the Advisory Committee on Labor and Income Statistics for Statistics Canada and as a consultant for the National Health Interview Survey and the National Longitudinal Surveys, and on the advisory board of the National Children's Study.

She served on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science magazine from 2014–2018, and as the editor of the Journal of Economic Literaturefrom 2010–2013. Currie currently serves on the advisory board for the Journal of Economic Perspectives, and as Associate Editor for the Journal of Population Economics. She has previously held editorial roles for numerous economic peer-reviewed journals, including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Health Economics, and the Journal of Public Economics.

Although Currie published several studies early in her career about collective bargaining in the public sector, she is best known for her work on the impact of poverty and government anti-poverty policies on the health and well-being of children over their life cycle. Beginning the early 1990s, she was one of the first economists to evaluate such programs from the point of view of the child. She has written about early intervention programs, expansions of Medicaid program, public housing and food and nutrition programs. In work with Duncan Thomas and Eliana Garces, she showed that children in Head Start made gains relative to their own siblings in terms of both test scores and longer-term measures of attainment. In work with Jonathan Gruber, she showed that expansions of public health insurance to low income women and children improved access to care and reduced infant mortality. Research on the effects of the safety net on American children is reviewed in her book, "The Invisible Safety Net."

Currie has also investigated broader socioeconomic determinants of fetal and child health, including health care, child maltreatment, nutrition, pollution exposure, and maternal education and smoking behaviors. Her work showing that the adoption of EZ-Pass improved infant health in Pennsylvania and New Jersey received wide attention. Her work showing disparities in fetal exposure to pollution and their consequences is summarized in her 2011 Ely lecture to the American Economics Association. In work with Anna Aizer and Hannes Schwandt, she has shown that inequality in mortality is falling among U.S. children, at the same time that inequality in mortality among adults has been increasing, and attributed this improvement to the protective effect of safety net programs. Overall, her work shows that early childhood, including the fetal period, is of great importance for the development of children's productive capabilities (their 'human capital') and that programs targeting early childhood can be particularly effective in remediating childhood disadvantage.

She is married to W. Bentley MacLeod, an economist at Columbia University, and together they have two children.

• "Inequality in mortality decreased among the young while increasing for older adults, 1990–2010," Science, 352 #6286, April 2016, 708–712, with Hannes Schwandt."
• "Environmental Health Risks and Housing Values: Evidence from 1600 Toxic Plant Openings and Closings," American Economic Review, 105 #2, Feb. 2015, 678–709, with Lucas Davis, Michael Greenstone and Reed Walker.
• "The Intergenerational Transmission of Inequality: Maternal Disadvantage and Health at Birth," Science, 344 #6186, May 2014, 856–861, with Anna Aizer.
• "Children with Disabilities" Issue of The Future of Children, 22(1), Princeton-Brookings, Washington D.C. Spring 2012, edited with Robert Kahn.
• "Inequality at Birth: Some Causes and Consequences," American Economic Review, 101 #3, May 2011, 1-22 (Ely lecture).
• "Traffic Congestion and Infant Health: Evidence from E-ZPass," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, January 2011, #3: 65–90, with Reed Walker.
• "First Do No Harm? Tort Reform and Birth Outcomes," Quarterly Journal of Economics, CXXIII #2, May 2008, 795–830, with Bentley MacLeod.
• "Air Pollution and Infant Health: What Can We Learn From California's Recent Experience?" Quarterly Journal of Economics, vCXX #3, August 2005, 1003–1030, with Matthew Neidell.
• "Socioeconomic Status and Health: Why is the Relationship Stronger for Older Children?," American Economic Review, v93 #5, December 2003, 1813–1823, with Mark Stabile.
• "Mother's Education and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Evidence from College Openings," Quarterly Journal of Economics, VCXVIII #4, Nov. 2003, with Enrico Moretti, 1495–1532.
• "Heat or Eat? Income Shocks and the Allocation of Nutrition in American Families," American Journal of Public Health 93(7), July 2003,1149-1154, with Jayanta Bhattacharya, Thomas DeLeire, and Steven Haider.
• The Invisible Safety Net: Protecting the Nation's Poor Children and Families, Princeton University Press, Spring 2006.
• "Longer Term Effects of Head Start," The American Economic Review,v92 #4, Sept. 2002, 999–1012, with Eliana Garces and Duncan Thomas.
• "Saving Babies: The Efficacy and Cost of Recent Expansions of Medicaid Eligibility for Pregnant Women," The Journal of Political Economy, December, 1996, 104 #6, 1263–1296, with Jonathan Gruber.
• "Health Insurance Eligibility, Utilization of Medical Care, and Child Health," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, May 1996, 111 #2, 431–466, with Jonathan Gruber.
• "Does Head Start Make A Difference?" The American Economic Review, June 1995, 85 #3, 341–364, with Duncan Thomas.
• Welfare and the Well-Being of Children, Harwood Academic Publishers, Chur Switzerland, 1995.
• "Collective Bargaining in the Public Sector:The Effect of Legal Structure on Dispute Costs and Wages," The American Economic Review, September 1991, 81 #4, 693–718, with Sheena McConnell.
• "An Experimental Comparison of Dispute Rates in Alternative Arbitration Systems," Econometrica, Nov. 1992, 60 #6, 1407–1433, with Orley Ashenfelter, Janet Currie, Henry Farber and Matthew Spiegel.