I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student of Agriculture and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

My academic path took me through several disciplines. I received a Bachelor of Technology in Civil Engineering from VJTI, Mumbai University, a Master in Economics from UW-Madison, and I am currently a Ph.D. student in Agriculture and Applied Economics from UW-Madison. After my Bachelor's degree, I worked in different managerial positions in the construction industry in India. Everyday interaction with the daily wage workers and understanding their real-life problems in addition to my own social and personal life experiences, motivated and provided me with critical lenses to pursue a career in Economics, especially in population health, aging, racial/caste/gender inequality in health and human capital, and how that can shape our understanding of the social world.

My research broadly focuses on policy evaluations for health, aging, human capital, and inequality in the US and India. I also study how exposure to shocks at different stages of life affects later life outcomes. Recent projects include evaluating the effect of early life exposure to the Green Revolution may affect older adults' physical and cognitive health and the next generation's human capital; wage discrimination between foreign-born and US-born faculty at the Land Grant Universities; how class size affects the test scores of children in primary schools; how a bicycle policy for school girls can have an unintended spillover effect; how the nutritional program may affect social mobility in the US; and how the mortality differs geographically after the rural hospital closures in the US.

I am a student affiliate with the Center for Demography, Health, and Aging (CDHA), the Institute of Research on Poverty (IRP), and a junior scholar at the Retirement and Disability Research Center (RDRC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Research Interest:

Health, Aging, Public, Education, Racial and Gender Inequality, Agriculture.

Contact:

521 Taylor Hall, 427 Larch St., Madison, WI 53706

Email: gawai@wisc.edu