Gabriella Conti is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and in the Department of Social Science at University College London; and Research Fellow at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and at IZA Bonn. She was a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Health and Wellbeing, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Her research draws on both the biomedical and the social sciences with the aim of understanding the developmental origins of health inequalities, and the behavioural and biological pathways through which early life conditions affect well-being throughout the lifecourse. She has published in prestigious journals in different disciplines, such as Science, PNAS, the Economic Journal, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Econometrics and Lancet. Her research has been supported among others by the NIH, H2020, Nuffield Foundation, Health Foundation, British Academy.
She has recently been awarded the Philip Leverhulme Prize in Economics, which “recognises the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising”; and the Nick Hales Award from the DOHaD society, for a “young and emerging investigator who has made an outstanding scientific contribution to the DOHaD field”. She is also the PI of a 5-year ERC Consolidator Award from the European Research Council (SH1 Economics Panel) for the project “The Developmental Origins of Health: Biology, Shocks, Investments, and Policies”.
Gabriella holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Essex. Prior to joining UCL, she was a Post-Doctoral Scholar and then an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. At IFS, she works with researchers both in EDePo and EdSkills on the evaluation of interventions to promote child development in both developed and developing countries.
Education
PhD Economics, University of Essex, 2008
Research Doctorate Economics, University of Napoli "Federico II", 2004
MSc Economics, University of Essex, 2003
Diploma Economics, University of Essex, 2002
Laurea (BSc) Law, University of Napoli "Federico II", 1999
Over the last two decades, Sure Start Children’s Centres (and their predecessors, Sure Start Local Programmes) have been one of the most important policy programmes in the early years in England. These centres operate as ‘one-stop shops’ for families with children under 5, bringing together a range of support including health services, parenting support programmes, and access to childcare and early education.
In this paper we quantify for the first time the economic costs of fatal and non-fatal child maltreatment in the UK in relation to several short-, medium- and long-term outcomes ranging from physical and mental health problems, to labour market outcomes and welfare use.
We present a comprehensive evaluation of the health impacts of the introduction and expansion of a large non-contributory health insurance program in Mexico, the Seguro Popular (SP).
Home visiting programs constitute an important policy to support vulnerable families with young children. They mainly aim to improve infant-parent relationships, however evidence on their effectiveness based on observational measures is relatively scarce.
We conducted an 18-year follow-up of 618 out of 742 low-income, primarily AfricanAmerican mothers with no previous live births enrolled in an randomized clinical trial of
prenatal and infancy home visiting by nurses. We compared nurse-visited and control-group
women for public-benefit costs, rates of substance abuse and depression, and examined
possible mediators of intervention effects.
IFS Research Fellow Gabriella Conti has been awarded the Nick Hales Award by the International Society for Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD).
Building on early animal studies, 20th-century researchers increasingly explored the fact that early events – ranging from conception to childhood – affect a child’s health trajectory in the long-term. By the 21st century, a wide body of research had emerged, incorporating the original ‘Fetal Origins Hypothesis’ into the ‘Developmental Origins of Health and Disease’.
Our research looks at the impacts that Sure Start had on children’s health during their primary school years from its start in 1999 and its peak in the late 2000s.
