People

Diane Coffey

Executive Director

Diane is a demographer who studies social influences on health in India. She studies the intergenerational transmission of poor population health resulting from India’s exceptionally poor maternal nutrition. Her research traces links among gender, stratification, and poor birth, childhood, and adult health outcomes. She has also studied the causes and consequences of poor sanitation in India.

Her research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, as well as Social Science & Medicine, Population Research & Policy Review, and other journals. She is currently a visiting researcher at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi.

Diane grew up in eastern Connecticut. She holds a BA from Villanova University, and MPA and a PhD from Princeton University. See her academic website here.

Blog

New SARI datasets!

By Diane Coffey, on July 18th, 2019

I am so pleased to announce the release of three new SARI datasets from Maharasthra, Jharkhand, and Bihar! You can download the data here after entering your name, email address, and occupation. Please join me in congratulating Payal, Nazar, andRead More..

Dean's new book on air pollution and climate change is out!

By Diane Coffey, on June 26th, 2019

Dean's new book on air pollution and climate change, "Air: Pollution, Climate Change, and India's Choice Between Policy and Pretence," is out! You can get a Kindle copy here and a print copy here. Please share it widely online andRead More..

Nazar interviewed on DW News Asia!

By Diane Coffey, on February 25th, 2019

Nazar was recently interviewed about the Swacch Bharat Mission on DW News Asia. It was great that he was able to publicize the results of the 2018 Survey of Rural Sanitation and Fuel Use on TV! Check out the newsRead More..

Check out our new paper on experiences and perceptions of discrimination

By Diane Coffey, on October 25th, 2018

This week, a new paper by the SARI team came out in the Economic & Political Weekly. Here's the abstract: Through the use of new survey data, the experiences and perceptions of discrimination among Dalits and Muslims have been quantified.Read More..

Research

Willingness to Sacrifice for Climate Mitigation in Representative Samples of Indian Adults

By Diane Coffey, on May 25th, 2019

This paper studies people’s willingness to sacrifice to achieve climate mitigation using a new-survey experiment that is representative of adults in the Indian state of Rajasthan and the city of Mumbai. In contrast to developed countries, few studies investigate climateRead More..

Open defecation: Manual scavenging’s legacy in rural India

By Diane Coffey, on February 15th, 2019

Manual scavenging is caste-based work which has been handed down over generations, subjecting the same families and communities to deep humiliation, social exclusion, and poor health. This book chapter argues that same casteist attitudes that relegate Dalits to the filthy workRead More..

Where Bharat Goes

By Diane Coffey, on February 15th, 2019

This book chapter discusses why rural Indians tend to reject affordable sanitation options, using which many poorer countries in the developing world have either completely eliminated or have successfully reduced open defecation. The practice of open defecation has negative externalitiesRead More..

The association between neonatal death and facility birth in regions of India

By Diane Coffey, on February 15th, 2019

This paper assesses evidence for the hypothesis that facility births reduce NNM using new data from the National Family Health Survey, 2015-2016. It finds that for babies born outside of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, facility birth is robustly associated with neonatalRead More..