Metcalf Summer 2023 Research Assistant, Demographic Change & Fertility - Anup Malani
This internship is part of the University’s Jeff Metcalf Internship Program. Please review to learn more about benefits and program requirements for Metcalf interns.
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About Your Organization
Anup Malani conducts research on economic development, with a focus on India. His research group, including professors at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and the World Bank, conducts RCTs on health insurance and agricultural market interventions in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh. He also works with demographers at U. Maryland and Duke to study the causes of fertility decline in India. He works with Arpit Gupta at NYU to study caste in India and Adam Chilton at U. Chicago to study slums in India. Professor Malani is also the faculty director of the International Innovatio Corps, a program that sends recent graduates to work for local governments across the US on data science projects and for state and central governments in India on a range of economic development projects.
Job Title and Work Location
Professor Malani is hiring for a research assistant to work on projects concerning demographic change in India. Specifically, he is exploring why fertility is declining in rural India. Is it due, e.g., to changes in income, urbanization of rural India, or to transmission of culture from urban to rural India? In addition, he is also exploring recently changes in sex ratios (number of males / females) at birth and their drivers.
This job will be performed remotely. However, Professor Malani expects meeting at least two times per week for progress reports. Meetings are typically over Zoom.
Job Duties and Responsibilities
The candidate is expected to retrieve data, clean data so that it can be analyzed by the candidate or Professor Malani, run statistical analysis on those data, and create well formatted tables and figures for inclusion in reports and papers.
The candidate is expected to meet with Professor Malani at least 2 times a week to report progress. More frequent meetings may be required during periods that a project is starting up or close to submission. The candidate is expected to report on their progress in Latex in an Overleaf document. They are also expected to write well-commented and replicable program files and keep files in a well-organized folder structure on a shared drive.
The internship will run from June 19 – September 8, 2023. Students are expected to work 40 hours per week.
Requirements
A successful candidate should be familiar with Stata, have experience cleaning data, running basic statistical analysis at the level taught in an undergraduate econometrics class or greater, and be able to generate aesthetically pleasing tables and figures. The candidate should also have familiarity with Latex so they can write progress reports on Overleaf.
The candidate should be comfortable reporting their work and ideas to a small group of fellow research assistants or professors working on the same or related projects.
Required Materials
Please submit via email a resume and transcript, along with a letter highlighting past research assistant work, their own written or class work that demonstrates relevant skills, and their interest in the subject matter (demographic change and/or economic development). Optionally, students can choose to submit examples of code and/or tables and figures they have created.
Class Year Eligibility
First, Second and/or third year students are eligible to apply for Metcalf opportunities
Expiration Date
Students must submit their application materials by March 10, 2023.