The dynamic impacts of child health and skills enhanced by school interventions across the life course
This project, “The Dynamic Impacts of Child Health and Skills Enhanced by School Interventions across the Life Course” (DYNAMICS), is the first ever to rigorously and comprehensively study complete short- and long-term dynamic effects of health and human capital at school ages. It combines research in the fields of economics and epidemiology to answer the overarching research question: whether and how the dynamics of a child’s health and skills, enhanced by successive nationwide school reforms, translates into various later-life outcomes. Economists have recently shown that public health interventions in early life substantially boost an individual’s earnings in the long term, albeit have not investigated how these effects emerge. Moreover, epidemiologists have found that body size, growth and disease history at school ages are strongly associated with health in adulthood. DYNAMICS investigates how the interplay of school health, nutrition, and education reforms as well as the event of WWII, which uniquely overlapped in Denmark, affected children and how it formed their health and well-being in adulthood. It combines the most recent advances in research through the University of Southern Denmark’s expertise in health dynamics and advanced econometric methods, the University of Copenhagen’s expertise in life course epidemiology, my research experience with individual data and early-life effects, and the richest data on Denmark. This project will not only create societally important cutting-edge knowledge in applied microeconomics but also immensely broaden my international network and provide important transferable skills for future success.