Core Theme: Every since my dad told me the best investment he could make was to investment in my education, I have been fascinated about the role of education as a fundamental cause of better life outcomes. This is the core theme of my research--understanding whether education causally leads to better outcomes; how it interacts with genetics; and understanding the determinants of education.
Quasi-Causal Effects of Education using Twin Data: I have employed different twin datasets to understand how associations between education and several outcomes change when controlling for shared genetic and environmental factors. Representative publications:
Amin, V. (2011). Returns to education: evidence from UK twins: comment. American Economic Review, 101(4), 1629-1635.
Amin, V., & Behrman, J. R. (2014). Do more-schooled women have fewer children and delay childbearing? Evidence from a sample of US twins. Journal of Population Economics, 27(1), 1-31.
Amin, V., Behrman, J. R., & Kohler, H. P. (2015). Schooling has smaller or insignificant effects on adult health in the US than suggested by cross-sectional associations: New estimates using relatively large samples of identical twins. Social Science & Medicine, 127, 181-189.
Amin, V., Lundborg, P., & Rooth, D. O. (2015). The intergenerational transmission of schooling: Are mothers really less important than fathers?. Economics of Education Review, 47, 100-117.
Biosocial Determinants of Health: Another strand of my research investigates impacts of genetics and education on health. This strand of research has also looked at whether education can "get under one's skin" by influencing cellular aging, and applied partial-identification approaches for contexts where it is hard to find natural experiments to identify causal effects. Representative publications:
Amin, V., Böckerman, P., Viinikainen, J., Smart, M. C., Bao, Y., Kumari, M., ... & Pehkonen, J. (2017). Gene-environment interactions between education and body mass: Evidence from the UK and Finland. Social Science & Medicine, 195, 12-16.
Amin, V., Fletcher, J. M., Sun, Z., & Lu, Q. (2022). Higher educational attainment is associated with longer telomeres in midlife: Evidence from sibling comparisons in the UK Biobank. SSM-Population Health, 17, 101018.
Amin, V., Fletcher, J. M., Lu, Q., & Song, J. (2023). Re-examining the relationship between education and adult mental health in the UK: A research note. Economics of Education Review, 93, 102354.
Hoang, C. T., Amin, V., Behrman, J. R., Kohler, H. P., & Kohler, I. V. (2023). Heterogenous trajectories in physical, mental and cognitive health among older Americans: Roles of genetics and life course contextual factors. SSM-Population Health, 23, 101448.
Amin, V., Behrman, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Flores, C. A., Flores-Lagunes, A., & Kohler, H. P. (2025). Does Schooling Improve Cognitive Abilities at Older Ages? Causal Evidence From Nonparametric Bounds. Demography, 62(2), 515-541.
Amin, V., Behrman, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Flores, C. A., Flores-Lagunes, A., Kohler, I., ... & Stites, S. D. (2025). Causal Effects of Schooling on Memory at Older Ages in Six Low-and Middle-Income Countries: Nonparametric Evidence With Harmonized Datasets. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 80(6), gbaf057.
Impacts of Health on Education and Labor Market Outcomes: My publications in this area are:
Amin, V., Behrman, J. R., Fletcher, J. M., Flores, C. A., Flores‐Lagunes, A., & Kohler, H. P. (2021). Genetic risks, adolescent health, and schooling attainment. Health Economics, 30(11), 2905-2920.
Germinario, G., Amin, V., Flores, C. A., & Flores-Lagunes, A. (2022). What can we learn about the effect of mental health on labor market outcomes under weak assumptions? Evidence from the NLSY79. Labour Economics, 79, 102258.