Rita Ginja is currently a Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Bergen. She holds a PhD in Economics from University College London.

Rita’s research interests include labor economics, education and development. She studied the effects of a large preschool program for poor in U.S. (the Head Start) on cognition and behaviors. She is working on the evaluation of a Chilean program for indigent families and on the health and labor market impacts of universal health insurance. She has also been studying the responses to different types of shocks to family resources on within household allocations and to which extent these changes are transferred to children’s human capital.

Rita was an IZA Research Affiliate from 2010-2013, rejoined in May 2016 and became an IZA Fellow in November 2021.