Santosh Kumar is an Associate Professor of Development and Global Health Economics at the Keough School of Global Affairs, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA. Dr. Kumar is a development economist whose research investigates the relationship between children’s health, human capital, and economic development. Much of his work highlights the impact of early-life health on human capital with an emphasis on South Asia.

He has conducted randomized control trials of using school lunch programs as the delivery channel to provide iron to anemic children in rural Bihar, India. He has explored the impacts of access to sanitation, microfinance, rural roads, and electricity on developmental outcomes.

Santosh received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Delhi, M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Houston (2009). He was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard Center of Population Studies and Development and worked at Institute for Health Metrics (IHME) at the University of Washington, Seattle.

Santosh Kumar joined IZA as a Research Fellow in March 2021.