NEWS & MEDIA

NEWS

Research Paper Presentation

Beenish Amir and Fatimah Shah presented their MPhil research (abstracts given below) in the Economics Faculty Departmental Meeting held on 8th February, 2018, at 10:00a.m in TRC-1.

Impact of Prenatal Exposure to Fasting on Cognitive Development of Children.

Beenish Amir

Evidence has shown that prenatal nutritional shocks have a long lasting impact on health, cognitive ability and adult out comes. I would try to prove this by looking at the effect of prenatal exposure to fasting on cognitive development of children aged 5-15 years. In order to obtain valid results, fasting would be considered during the month of Ramadan, which relative to famines and natural disasters is a mild shock. Fasting in Ramadan takes place every year but the time is different each year because Ramadan follows the lunar calendar. The difference in days each year ensures that pregnancy decisions are exogenous to Ramadan occurrence. LEAPS study data collected by World Bank for different regions of Punjab would be used. Intent to treat analysis would be done to deal with noncompliance due to non-availability of data on whether all pregnant women fasted during Ramadan or not.

Intergenerational Transfer of Aspirations: The Impact of Gender

Fatimah Shah

This research seeks to identify the relationship between parental occupations and gender specific career aspirations of undergraduate students. To do this surveys would be conducted on fourth year undergraduate students in different universities of Lahore. These would be capturing data on demographic characteristics, parental occupations and career aspirations. As career aspirations are determinant of one's career and lifestyle choices, the results from this study may help in understanding prevailing gender gap in various labor market outcomes.