Deepshikha Batheja

Deepshikha Batheja is a Fellow based in Bangalore, India.

Dr. Batheja’s primary projects focus on factors influencing women’s participation and productivity in paid work in India, such as gender diversity in the workplace, gender discrimination in hiring, mental health problems arising from both personal and work stressors, and restrictive norms enforced by co-residing parents-in-law. She recently got involved in a large-scale village-level RCT, evaluating the impact of sports-based intervention on learning outcomes of adolescents. Dr. Batheja is also estimating the impact of indoor and outdoor pollution on worker health and productivity in the Indian call center setting. She co-led the design of OHT’s PhD program in collaboration with BITS Pilani on Data Sciences for Global Health.

At the One Health Trust, Dr. Batheja has ongoing transdisciplinary work in health and economics, such as designing and assessing the value of Biobanks using the conjoint experiment method, examination of acceptability and willingness to pay for COVID-19 self-testing kits in developing countries (WHO project), and studying the impact of oxygen concentrators on alleviating oxygen shortages in India with IFMR. Using mixed methods, including in-depth interviews, her current research also explores the impact of COVID-19 on children with disabilities and non-prescription sale of antibiotics in pharmacies in New Delhi.

She has received funding support from the International Growth Center (IGC), JPAL under their Post-Primary Education (PPE) Initiative, BLUM Initiative, China-India Visiting Scholars Fellowship, and the MSD Fellowship for Global Health. Her research work has been featured in World Bank Development Impact Blog, Ideas for India, IGC Blogpost, and Hindustan Times.

Dr. Batheja’s broad research interests are in the fields of development, health economics, and labor economics. A key thread in her research has been the impact of gender on economic and health outcomes. Her research examines the determinants of female labor force participation and worker productivity in developing countries. Her current research work also focuses on estimating the short- and long-run returns to human capital accumulation in India. Dr. Batheja uses real-world data and often relies on randomized controlled trial (RCT) methodology to test economic theory and inform policy.

Dr. Batheja has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Riverside.

Contact Deepshikha: [email protected]