Payal Hathi

Payal Hathi is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Population Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is a social demographer whose research focuses on social inequality and health in the Global South, with two main lines of inquiry. The first investigates the association between health outcomes and social disadvantage along lines of gender, caste, and religion in India. The second analyzes how dynamics of gender inequality shape the demographic measurement of fertility and mortality globally.

Payal is trained in quantitative and demographic methods, and also uses qualitative methods in her work. Her research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Demography, Contraception, and in several other journals, including Economic and Political Weekly, a leading journal of policy and social science in India.

For over a decade, Payal has also worked with r.i.c.e., a research non-profit that works to study and inform policy on child and maternal health in India. She received a BA in Economics and Political Economy from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPA in Development Studies from Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and a PhD in Demography and Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.