Diane Coffey

Diane Coffey is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology & Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She is also a visiting researcher at the Indian Statistical Institute in New Delhi and co-executive director of r.i.c.e. (research institute for compassionate economics), which she co-founded to inform policies about child health in India.

Dr. Coffey's research focuses on social influences on health in India, with two primary areas of investigation. First, she examines the intergenerational transmission of poor population health resulting from India's exceptionally poor maternal nutrition, tracing links among gender, stratification, and health outcomes across the life course. Second, she investigates the consequences of poor sanitation in developing countries for early life health, including mortality, height, and anemia, with particular attention to the social causes of open defecation in rural India.

Her research, which has been published in prestigious journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Social Science & Medicine, and Demography, reveals that rural India's high rates of open defecation are linked to social forces and the renegotiation of caste and untouchability rather than poverty alone. Her book with Dean Spears, Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development, and the Costs of Caste, won the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences in 2017.

Dr. Coffey teaches courses in social statistics and demographic methods at UT Austin. Her work bridges academic research and policy impact, with findings that have significant implications for understanding and addressing health disparities in India.