Category: News

Devising Ways to Measure Unmet Need in Family Planning: A Thought Experiment

By Mahesh Karra Unlike many domains in health, the provision of high-quality family planning services is not only measured by the achievement of good reproductive health outcomes, but also considers the objective of helping women and couples maximize a complex and evolving set of preferences around future fertility and well-being.  For this reason, the demand […]

Women, Power and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India

Quotas for women in government have swept the globe. Yet, little is known about their capacity to upend entrenched social, political and economic hierarchies. The new book, Women, Power and Property: The Paradox of Gender Equality Laws in India, by Human Capital Initiative Core Faculty Member Rachel Brulé explores this question within the context of […]

Despite Widespread Access, Quality of HIV Care Differs Across South African Facilities

By Emanne Khan South Africa is home to the world’s largest population of individuals living with HIV, numbering nearly 8 million, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. South Africa also administers the world’s largest public HIV treatment program, which serves a patient population between 4-5 million people.  Despite the scope of the […]

Meet the Team: Siddharth George, Human Capital Initiative

Siddharth George, Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University, is the newest faculty member of the Human Capital Initiative at the Global Development Policy Center. The Human Capital Initiative brings together an interdisciplinary team of researchers across the Boston University community to contribute to the advancement of innovative research on the political economy of human development. […]

Infrastructure Politics in Latin America: How are Public Goods Provided?

By Maria Santarelli As part of the Human Capital Speaker Series, Dr. Alisha C. Holland spoke about her new book project “Creative Construction” on the politics of large-scale infrastructure in Latin America. Holland is Assistant Professor of Government at Harvard University and she has conducted extensive research on social and urban politics in Latin America. […]

Curse of the Mummy‐ji: The Influence of Mothers‐in‐Law on Women in India

Worldwide, social networks play an important role in the lives of individuals, influencing everything from the knowledge people acquire to the goods and services they utilize. However, not everyone experiences equal opportunity to gain from social connections. In traditional patriarchal societies, women may have limited ability to access and benefit from existing networks due to […]

Adding Measurement Error to Location Data to Protect Subject Confidentiality While Allowing for Consistent Estimation of Exposure Effects

Many datasets involving human subjects contain sensitive information and require the protection of subject confidentiality. The protection of subject confidentiality can, however, limit access to the data, which in turn may limit the scope for valuable research. A common approach to addressing this issue is to create public use datasets that mask, or perturb, information […]

Karra Named Max Planck Sabbatical Award Laureate for 2020

Mahesh Karra, Associate Director of GDP Center’s Human Capital Initiative and Assistant Professor of Global Development Policy at the Frederick S. Pardee School for Global Studies at Boston University, has been appointed as a Max Planck Sabbatical Award Laureate for 2020. The Max Planck Society launched the Max Planck Sabbatical Award in order to support scientists by awarding them research stays […]

Join the Fight Against COVID-19

To complete the survey, please click here. In light of the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, researchers at Harvard University and Boston University have developed a short web-based survey to gather information on coronavirus disease and social distancing behaviors from the general US adult population. The results from this survey aim to produce timely, rapid results that […]