[2] He belongs to the world's most prominent development[3] and education economists[4] and human capital scholars,[5] with a strong focus on Central and South America.
[1] Jere Behrman's research revolves around the empirical determinants and impacts of human resources such as early childhood development, education, health and nutrition in the presence of unobserved factors (e.g. innate ability or health), the economics of households and imperfect markets, and the economic consequences of imperfect information.
These differences are then reflected in the relationship between children's birth order and their (age-adjusted) schooling and earnings as young adults.
[11] Studying the distribution of food among children within households in rural South India, Behrman finds that parents give preference to their sons when food is scarce, especially among lower caste households, and display only limited aversion for such inequality, thus suggesting that girls may be particularly vulnerable to malnutrition during famines.
However, they also find that differences in birthweights don't play a large role in determining the world distribution of income.
[20] Last, evaluating the impact of improving nutrition during early childhood on education among adults in Guatemala, Behrman, Maluccio, Hoddinott, Martorell, Quisumbing and Stein find that doing so increased the average number of grades completed by women by 1.2 grades as well as both male and female reading comprehension and non-verbal cognitive ability by one quarter standard deviation, thus suggesting that improvements to the nutrient intakes of very young children can have substantial long-term educational impacts.
[21] In a theme often related to nutrition and health, Behrman has conducted research on the determinants and impacts of education, especially in Latin America.