Personal Bio

Tania Barham (PhD UC Berkeley 2005) is an Associate Professor of Economics and Research Faculty at The Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is an applied microeconomist specializing in health, development, migration, and labor economics. She uses experimental and quasi-experimental methods to explore how policies impact individuals living in poverty across their lifespan and across generations.

Her research investigates the influence of childhood poverty reduction programs including conditional cash transfer in Mexico and Nicaragua and child health and family planning programs in Bangladesh. This research entails survey data collection that connects individuals across generations to understand how these programs affect human capital, socio-emotional skills, fertility, labor, and migration patterns of people who benefited as children, and their subsequent impact on the human capital of their children. Additionally, she collaborates with the Colorado Department of Human Services to assess how subsidized employment programs in Colorado help the long-term unemployed secure stable employment.

Her research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, The National Science Foundation, The Population Research Bureau, The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, The Inter-American Development Bank, and the World Bank, among others.

Currently, she serves as the Director of the Health and Society program at the Institute of Behavioral Science and is a Research Affiliate with the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at the University of Notre Dame. She has also worked on projects with large multi-lateral institutions, state and national governments, and NGOs.

Published and Accepted Papers

Working Papers

Works In Progress

  • Structural Transformation and the Demographic Transition: Evidence from Bangladesh (with Randall Kuhn, Brett McCully, and Patrick Turner)
  • Long-Term Effects of Arsenic Exposure in Childhood on Human Capital and Earnings (with Solveig Delabroye)