Deva Sahadevan
Research Associate
303-871-2324 (Office)
What I do
Born and raised in the culturally diverse Northern Indian city of Lucknow, Deva grew up taking great interest in learning about the complexities of human interactions and world affairs, in general. Having been a witness to the crippling effects of poverty and inequality, he pursued a fascinating academic journey in social sciences and development economics to understand and contribute to the broader field of public-centric research for social welfare.
Deva’s professional experiences include stints with NGOs and development organizations in the field of education, agriculture, and rural livelihood practices. The academic line of my work has involved extensive public policy and development interventions' research using sophisticated econometric and forecasting tools. He is a proponent of evidence-driven policies that underlines the significance of high-quality, accessible data. His latest research project looks at the causal implications of a social security program for the elderly in India, titled “Transitioning into Retirement: Effect of Pension Expansion on Elderly Labor Force Participation”.
In his free time, Deva enjoys following and keeping up with sports, reading, cooking, exploring the outdoors and watching shows, stand-up comedy to name a few. He is also keen to continue working on his newly found interest of language learning.
Degree(s)
- BA Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences
- MS International and Development Economics, University of San Francisco
Research
- Accelerating universal electricity access and its effects on sustainable development indicators in collaboration with UNDP (2023)
- Assessing long term development patterns in Uganda supported by EC, Brussels and EPRC, Kampala (2021-2022)
- Masters’ thesis: ‘Transitioning into retirement: Effect of pension expansion on elderly labor force participation in India’ using a regression discontinuity design (2021)
- Mini project paper on ‘Caste-based wage differentials in labor market outcomes in India’ (2020)
- Experimental economics’ project on ‘Spousal marriage type and asset ownership’ using incentivized behavioral experiment survey dataset from Sierra Leone (2020)
- Bachelors’ dissertation on ‘Sports policy and budgetary allocation analysis: Evidence from India’ (2019)
- Seminar paper on ‘Volatility of the Indian rupee: Exchange rates and constraints to development’ (2018)
- Experiential learning project on the economy of a rural village, Lohgaon in Maharashtra, India (2017)
