On the determinants of health and education

There are a number of ongoing projects focusing on health and education and the scholar will be able to be involved in them at different capacities.

School discipline and health in the community

In 2015 the Queensland Education Department introduced the Strengthening Discipline Act (SDA) policy change which provided state school principals with greater disciplinary powers (QED, 2016) and resulted in a noticeable increase in school suspensions. Currently, there is no evidence of the effect of releasing disruptive students onto the streets on community-level health indicators, such as community safety, violence, trauma, and other health outcomes like mental health and early pregnancy. This project seeks to fill in this gap in the literature using education administrative data and survey health data at different geographical levels.

Sleep and wellbeing

In this project we will assess the causal impact of sleep on a number of relevant life outcomes related to health and education of Australian children and adults. We will exploit differences in light exposure as exogenous triggers for variation in sleep using survey and linked administrative data.

The students will acquire hands-on experience working on applied and policy relevant projects within a team environment. They will learn how to produce and manage outputs in a systematic and professional manner. They will be involved in various tasks ranging from literature review, searching for data sources, applying for data use, creating datasets combining multiple data sources, conducting exploratory analysis and preliminary inference.

At the end of the scholarship programme the students will present their outputs in a 20 minute seminar presentation followed by questions from the audience.

Applications from students with a genuine interest in quantitative and applied research in the economics of health and education are welcome. Students are expected to have knowledge of Stata and excel, including use of do files and log files. Aside from a personal interest in the topic, a pro-active attitude, curiosity and willingness to learn will be essential to get the most out of this experience.

Tina Rampino (CBEH) & Rigissa Megalokonoumou (School of Economics)

We are seeking to supervise two scholars.

Please apply online and suitable applicants will be contacted.