Hira Farooqi is a recent PhD in Economics from Rice University and a Former Post Doctoral Fellow at the Center for Global Development. Prior to her PhD Hira obtained an MA in Economics from New York University as a Fulbright Masters Scholar.
Hira’s research lies at the intersection of labor, gender and family economics with a particular focus on the determinants of women's participation in economic activities in the context of the U.S. and Pakistan. Her PhD thesis evaluates the effectiveness of telework opportunities in reducing motherhood penalties and supporting the careers of mothers in the U.S. In 2023 Hira was selected for the prestigious Junior Scholar Intensive Training (JSIT) program supported by the Social Security Administration’s Retirement and Disability Research Consortium (RDRC) at the University of Wisconsin Madison to further develop her research agenda related to women’s economic empowerment in the US.
In another ongoing project she is studying how parental preferences regarding marriage attributes for daughters determine women’s educational attainment in Pakistan. Hira also serves as a research consultant at the World Bank, collaborating with teams from the East Asia Gender Innovation Lab and the Social Protection Group, to study the interplay between women’s employment and caregiving responsibilities in the context of low-income economies. In these research projects she makes use of novel experimental methodologies to estimate the demand for institutional childcare provision.
Currently Hira is a Principal Quantitative Modeler at Capital One Bank where she leverages machine learning and big data analytics to study credit risk management.