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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Las habilidades cognitivas medidas durante la adolescencia predicen los resultados educativos: Evidencia de Etiopia y Perú
2023 Jennifer López, Jere R. Behrman, Santiago Cueto, Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez
Utilizando datos de Niños del Milenio (NdM), se investiga la asociación entre las habilidades cognitivas medidas a los 12 años y los resultados educativos medidos a los 15 y 20 años. Los y las jóvenes con mayores puntajes en memoria de largo plazo y memoria de trabajo mostraron mejores resultados en las pruebas de vocabulario, […]
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El impacto del COVID-19 sobre la salud mental de jóvenes en el Perú
2023 Alan Sanchez, Marta Favara, Kath Ford, Annina Hittmeyer, Catherine Porter, Richard Freund, Douglas Scott
Using data from the longitudinal Young Lives (NdM for its acronym in Spanish) study, this bulletin documents factors associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression in 19-26 year olds in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam during the pandemic. Of the four countries, Peru was the most affected by COVID-19, and this was reflected in mental […]
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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 […]
No se han encontrado publicaciones de Marta Favara en la categoría Working paper
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JournalOxford Development Studies
Smarter through social protection? Evaluating the impact of Ethiopia’s safety-net on child cognitive abilities
2018 Marta Favara, Catherine Porter, Tassew Woldehanna
Ethiopia’s productive safety net is the second largest Social Protection Program in sub-Saharan Africa and has been rolled out to almost 10 million beneficiaries since 2005; its effects are therefore of general interest. We provide the first estimates of its impact on children’s cognitive abilities. To identify impacts of this program, we exploit four rounds […]
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JournalReview of Development Economics
Maternal group participation and child nutritional status in Peru
2017 Marta Favara
Using data from the Peruvian sample of the Young Lives study, this paper investigates the association between maternal group participation and child nutritional status at the ages of 1 and 5 years. This study finds that the relationship between child nutrition and maternal group participation depends on the level of maternal education. In fact, maternal […]
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JournalJournal of African Economies
Do Dreams Come True? Aspirations and Educational Attainments of Ethiopian Boys and Girls
2017 Marta Favara
Authors use unique individual-level panel data from Ethiopia to investigate the role of aspirations for human-capital investments. More specifically, they investigate how parental and children’s aspirations form and document the relation between early aspirations and educational attainment at the age of 15 and 19. Researchers find that aspirations are predictive of the number of year of schooling completed upon controlling […]
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Journal IZA Journal of Labor & Development
Psychosocial competencies and risky behaviours in Peru
2017 Marta Favara, Alan Sanchez
The authors use a unique longitudinal dataset from Peru to investigate the relationship between psychosocial competencies related to the concepts of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and aspirations, and a number of risky behaviours at a crucial transition period between adolescence and early adulthood. First of all, they document a high prevalence of risky behaviours with 1 out of […]
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