Marta Favara
PhD in Economics - University of Essex
marta.favara@qeh.ox.ac.uk
Marta is a Senior Researcher at the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford where she is leading the quantitative research agenda of Young Lives since 2015. She is also a Research Fellow at the Oxford Martin School Programme on African Governance and an IZA Research Affiliate. Before joining Young Lives, she worked as an economist at the World Bank. She obtained a PhD in Economics from the University of Essex (UK) and a Masters in Economics from the University of Leuven (Belgium).
Her main research interests include development economics (poverty, inequality and early childhood development); labour economics (education and gender) and behavioural economics (choice under uncertainty, adolescent risk behaviours). Her recent work focuses on foundational skills formation and young people’s behaviour (transition to the labour market, fertility decision and schooling enrolment). In addition, she investigates the role of aspirations and subjective expectations as potential self-enforcing mechanisms underlying poverty and gender inequality.
Publications
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JournalJournal of Economic Psychology
When choice matters: The asymmetric effects of precommitment implementation on healthy food choice
2026 Marta Favara, Joanna Mihaylova, Alan Sanchez
This paper investigates the role of precommitment in making healthy food choices, using a lab-in-the-field experiment embedded in the Young Lives longitudinal study in Peru. Leveraging the fact that participants were scheduled for a blood test and would therefore require a snack afterwards, we elicited participants’ snack choice from a predefined set. Participants were asked […]
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Life-Course Shocks and Food Insecurity: Longitudinal Evidence from Ethiopia, India, and Peru
2025 Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez, Juliana Quiua
This study investigates the relationship between life-cycle exposure to socioeconomic shocks and subsequent food insecurity in young adult households. Using two decades of longitudinal data (2002-2023) from the Young Lives study in Ethiopia, India, and Peru, we analyse how the timing of shocks influences current household food security. Our findings consistently demonstrate a significant association […]
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JournalJournal of Human Resources
Human Capital Development New Evidence on the Production of Socio-Emotional Skills
2025 Mark Mitchell, Marta Favara, Catherine Porter, Alan Sanchez
We estimate a dynamic model of socio-emotional skill development between ages eight and 22 for a Peruvian cohort born in 1994. At age eight there is no wealth gradient, in contrast to cognitive skills. However, by age 12, inequalities emerge and widen through age 19, driven by differential household investments, and cross-productivity with cognitive skills. […]
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Young People’s Mental Health in Unprecedented Times: Research Report from Round 7 in Ethiopia, India and Peru
2025 Julia Quigua, Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez
This report presents preliminary findings on young people’s mental health from the seventh round of the Young Lives survey conducted in Ethiopia, India and Peru in 2023–24, when the Younger Cohort was aged 22 and the Older Cohort was aged 29. According to Round 7 data, in India and Peru, levels of anxiety and depression […]
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Unpacking the COVID-19 gender employment gap among young people in the global south
2025 Douglas Scott, Richard Freund, Marta Favara, Catherine Porter, Alan Sanchez
We provide new evidence on the employment gap between young men and women in three low- and middle-income countries during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We estimate a year-end increase of 17–18 percentage points in Peru and India (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana), and 9.5 percentage points in Vietnam. A mediation approach is used […]
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Young People’s Mental Health in Unprecedented Times: Research Report from Round 7 in Ethiopia, India and Peru
2025 Julia Quigua, Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez
This report presents preliminary findings on young people’s mental health from the seventh round of the Young Lives survey conducted in Ethiopia, India and Peru in 2023–24, when the Younger Cohort was aged 22 and the Older Cohort was aged 29. According to Round 7 data, in India and Peru, levels of anxiety and depression […]
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Young Lives attrition report: Round 7
2025 María de los Ángeles Molina, Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez, Amanda Woodman
Over more than 20 years, Young Lives has followed two cohorts born seven years apart (Favara et al. 2021). This technical note documents the attrition rates from the seventh round of the Young Lives survey carried out in Ethiopia, India (the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) and Peru in 2023–24, when the Younger Cohort […]
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How early nutrition and foundational cognitive skills interconnect? Evidence from two developing countries
2022 Alan Sanchez, Marta Favara, Margaret Sheridan, Jere R. Behrman
We use unique data collected in Ethiopia and Peru as part of the Young Lives Study to investigate the relationship between early undernutrition and four foundational cognitive skills, the first two of which measure executive functioning: working memory, inhibitory control, long-term memory, and implicit learning. We exploit the rich longitudinal data available to control for […]
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How early nutrition and foundational cognitive skills interconnect? Evidence from two developing countries
2022 Alan Sanchez, Marta Favara, Margaret Sheridan, Jere R. Behrman
While the long-term consequences of early stunting on educational attainment and on school achievement tests are well-known, there is scarce evidence about the specific mechanisms through which early stunting leads to poorer educational outcomes, especially in LMIC contexts. We use unique data collected in Ethiopia and Peru as part of the Young Lives to investigate […]
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Late-childhood foundational cognitive skills predict educational outcomes through adolescence and into young adulthood: Evidence from Ethiopia and Peru
2022 Jennifer López, Jere R. Behrman, Santiago Cueto, Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez
The authors estimate the associations between a set of foundational cognitive skills (inhibitory control, working memory, long-term memory, and implicit learning) measured at age 12 and educational outcomes measured at ages 15 and 19-20 in Ethiopia and Peru (the Young Lives study). The estimates adjust for a rich set of lagged controls and include measurements […]
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JournalEconomics & Human Biology
Long-term effects of early life rainfall shocks on foundational cognitive skills: Evidence from Peru
2024 Nicolás Pazos, Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez, Douglas Scott, Jere Behrman
Global warming is changing precipitation patterns, particularly harming communities in low-and-middle income countries (LMICs). Whilst the long-term effects of being exposed to rainfall shocks early in life on school-achievement tests are well-established, there is little population-based evidence from LMICs on the mechanisms through which these shocks operate. Executive functions (EFs) are key for children’s learning […]
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JournalEconomics of Education Review
Late-childhood foundational cognitive skills predict educational outcomes through adolescence and into young adulthood: Evidence from Ethiopia and Peru
2024 Jennifer López, Jere R. Behrman, Santiago Cueto, Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez
We estimate associations between foundational cognitive skills (inhibitory control, working memory, long-term memory, and implicit learning) measured at age 12 and educational outcomes measured at ages 15 and 19–20 in Ethiopia and Peru, using the Young Lives data. The estimates adjust for rich sets of controls and include measurements of children’s baseline abilities. For a […]
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JournalWorld Development
Does early nutrition predict cognitive skills during later childhood? Evidence from two developing countries
2024 Alan Sanchez, Marta Favara, Margaret Sheridan, Jere R. Behrman
The existing evidence linking early undernutrition to educational outcomes in developing countries is largely focused on assessing its impacts on grade attainment and achievement test scores, with limited evidence on the foundational cognitive skills required to perform well at school. We use unique data collected in Ethiopia and Peru as part of the Young Lives […]
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JournalFrontiers in Nutrition
Development of an online food frequency questionnaire and estimation of misreporting of energy intake during the COVID-19 pandemic among young adults in Peru
2022 María Jesús Vega-Salas, Katherine Curi-Quinto, Alessandra Hidalgo-Aréstegui, Krysty Meza-Carbajal, Nataly Lago-Berrocal, Lena Arias, Marta Favara, Mary Penny, Alan Sanchez, Karani Santhanakrishnan Vimaleswaran
This study aims to describe the multi-stage process used to adapt a previously validated face-to-face Food Frequency Questionnaries (FFQ) of an online self-administered FFQ for young adults in Peru during the pandemic, including the selection of the food items, portion sizes, and food frequency response options. Furthermore, it aims at validating the FFQ by estimating the […]
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JournalPublic Health in Practice
The evolution of young people’s mental health during COVID-19 and the role of food insecurity: evidence from a four low-and-middle-income-country cohort study
2022 Catherine Porter, Annina Hittmeyer, Marta Favara, Douglas Scott, Alan Sanchez
Provide evidence on how young people’s mental health has evolved in Low-and-Middle-Income-Countries (LMICs) during the progression of the COVID-19 pandemic. Identify particularly vulnerable groups who report high and/or continuously high rates of mental health issues. Two consecutive phone-surveys (August–October and November–December 2020) in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam interviewed around 9000 participants of a 20-year […]
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