Understanding the origin of health and development deficits of low-income children is not only important for the scholarship of knowledge, but it is also vital for informing cost efficient policies to improve outcomes for these children. There is a clear policy debate whether we should target direct income transfers to the family or whether we should instead target the factors that may mediate the relationship between income and child outcome. The broad aim of this project is to provide new policy-relevant research focussing on the role of income in determining children’s cognitive, behavioural and health outcomes and empirically investigating the routes through which income affects child outcomes. This project will examine this association both in cross section approach and in longitudinal dimension using fixed effects and random effects approach to account the potential endogeneity of income. This project can be conducted using either Australian data or overseas data.

Students interested in pursuing a PhD (or Masters) in any of the above topics or related topics are encouraged to contact Associate Professor Rasheda Khanam (rasheda.khanam@usq.edu.au) for further details.
The potential students are expected to have:
(1) an academic background in any of these fields: economics, health economics, econometrics, statistics and public health, AND,
(2) research publications in relevant fields

Professor Rasheda Khanam

• Institute for Resilient Regions

• Applied Economics
• Public Health and Health Services

• Doctor of Philosophy (DPHD)