Emily Oster | |
|---|---|
 Oster in 2021 | |
| Born | (1980-02-14)February 14, 1980 (age 45) New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Occupations | Professor, author |
| Spouse | Jesse Shapiro |
| Children | 2 |
| Parent(s) | Sharon Oster andRay Fair |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Harvard University (BA,PhD) |
| Doctoral advisor | Michael Kremer |
| Academic work | |
| Institutions | University of Chicago Brown University |
| Notable works | Expecting Better,Cribsheet,The Family Firm |
Emily Fair Oster (born February 14, 1980) is an Americaneconomist who has served as the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence atBrown University since 2019, where she has been a professor of economics since 2015.[1][2] Her research interests span fromdevelopment economics andhealth economics to research design and experimental methodology. Her research was brought to the attention of non-economists through theWall Street Journal, the bookSuperFreakonomics, and her 2007TED Talk.
Oster is the author of four books,Expecting Better,The Family Firm,[3]The Unexpected, andCribsheet, which discuss a data-driven approach to decision-making in pregnancy and parenting.[4][5]
Oster was born on February 14, 1980, inNew Haven, Connecticut. Her parents,Sharon Oster andRay Fair, were both professors of economics atYale University.[6][7] When she was two years old, Oster's parents noticed that she talked to herself in her crib after they left her room. They placed a tape recorder in her room in order to find out what she was saying and passed the tapes on to a linguist and psychologist with whom they were friends. Analysis of Oster's speech showed that her language was much more complex when she was alone than when interacting with adults. This led to her being the subject of a series of academic papers which were collectively published as a compendium in 1989 titledNarratives from the Crib.[8][9]
After graduating fromChoate Rosemary Hall in 1998, Oster studied economics atHarvard University, graduating in 2002 with aBachelor of Arts. She then did doctoral studies in economics at Harvard underMichael Kremer. She received aPh.D. in 2006 with athesis titled "The Economics of Infectious Disease".[1][10][11]
From 2006 to 2007, Oster was a Becker Fellow at theBecker Center on Chicago Price Theory at theUniversity of Chicago, where she was anassistant professor at the Department of Economics from 2007 to 2009, an assistant professor at theBooth School of Business from 2009 to 2011, and anassociate professor from 2011 to 2014.[12][1] She became atenured associate professor of economics atBrown University in 2015, where she has been afull professor of economics since 2016 and the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence since 2019.[1][13][5] She is also the CEO of ParentData, a data-driven website she founded in 2020 that explores parenting practices.
Oster has been a research associate at theNBER since 2015, where she was a faculty research fellow from 2006 to 2015, and has been an associate editor of theQuarterly Journal of Economics since 2014.[1]
Oster's research focuses generally on development economics and health. In 2005, Oster published a dissertation for her economics Ph.D. from Harvard University, which suggested that the unusually high ratio of men to women in China was partially due to the effects of thehepatitis B virus.[14] "Hepatitis B and the Case of the Missing Women,"[15][9] pointed to findings that suggested areas with highhepatitis B rates tended to have higher male-to female birth ratios. Oster argued that the fact that hepatitis B can cause a woman to conceive male children more often than female, accounted for a bulk of the "missing women" inAmartya Sen's 1990 essay, "More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing."[16] Oster noted that the use of hepatitis B vaccine in 1982 led to a sharp decline in the male-to-female birth ratio.[9] Sen's essay had attributed the "missing women" to societal discrimination against girls and women in the form of the allocation of health, educational, and food resources.[9]
In April 2008, Oster released a working paper "Hepatitis B Does Not Explain Male-Biased Sex Ratios in China" in which she evaluated new data, which showed that her original research was incorrect.[17]Freakonomics authorSteven Levitt saw this as a sign of integrity.[18]
In a 2007TED Talk, Oster discussed the spread ofHIV in Africa, applying a cost-benefit analysis to the question of why African men have been slow to change their sexual behavior.[19]
In her book,Expecting Better, published in 2013, Oster criticizes conventional pregnancy customs,taboos andmores. She discusses the data behind common pregnancy practices and argues that many of them are misleading.[20] As of March 2019, the book has sold over 100,000 copies.[21] A revised and updated version of the book was published in 2021.
In the book, Oster argues against the generalrule of thumb to avoidalcohol consumption while pregnant, contends that there is no evidence that (low) levels of alcohol consumption by pregnant womenadversely affect their children.[22] This claim, however, has drawn criticism from theNational Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome[23] and others.[24]
Her second book,Cribsheet, was published in April 2019 and was aNew York Times best seller.[25][26] It evaluates and reviews the research on a variety of parenting topics relating to infants and toddlers, including breastfeeding, safe sleep guidelines, sleep training, and potty training.[27][28] The week of April 28, 2019,Cribsheet was also the best selling book inWashington, DC according to thePost.[29]
Her third book,The Family Firm: A Data-Driven Guide to Better Decision Making in the Early School Years, applies to school age children. A review discusses the relationship of her parenting approach to more permissive parenting ideas dating back to the pre-Reagan era.[30] Oster suggests that parents run their families like firms in order to maximize their children's' advantage over others.[31]
Oster was an advocate for opening schools during thecoronavirus epidemic, spearheading a project to collect data on the spread of coronavirus in schools,[32] and appearing frequently in media discussing why schools should open. In early October 2020, she wrote an influential and much cited article inThe Atlantic entitled "Schools Aren't Super-Spreaders" which inspired numerous articles.[33][34][35] Secretary of EducationBetsy DeVos and theCDC cited Oster's work as a reason to open schools during the pandemic.[36][37] In August 2020, Oster launched a dashboard compiling information on the spread of COVID-19 in schools. Critics of Oster's dashboard said it had methodological problems that they believe undermine its usefulness.[38]
On May 18, 2021, Oster published another piece inThe Atlantic titled "Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma", which generated much heated response.[39] The controversy surrounds Oster use of vaccination as an individualistic risk-reward proposition, insinuating that unvaccinated kids are still relatively safe from COVID, and the lack of mention of kids being spreaders of the infections themselves.[39] Critics pointed out such rhetoric may lead the lay audience to wrongly believe there is no urgent need to vaccinate.[39]
In September 2021, Oster launched the COVID-19 School Data Hub which includes information on virtual and in person status of schools across 31 states. According toThe New York Times, the data hub is "one of the most comprehensive efforts yet to document how schools operated during the pandemic."[40]
Emily is the daughter ofSharon Oster andRay Fair, both professors of economics atYale University. She marriedJesse Shapiro, also an economist,[41] in June 2006,[42] and they have two children.
