Radha Jagannathan is a Professor of Statistics in the Urban Planning and Policy Development Program at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, Rutgers University, and Associate Director of the Bloustein Center for Survey Research. She received her Ph.D. in Public Affairs from the Princeton School of Public & International Affairs at Princeton University. She has had long-standing collaborations and visiting appointments at Princeton University’s Office of Population Research and the Bendheim Thoman Center for Research on Child Wellbeing.

Professor Jagannathan’s research spans labor economics, education, public welfare, and child and youth policy, with a strong emphasis on inequality, human capital formation, and program evaluation. Her work integrates econometric modeling with institutional and policy analysis, often in comparative and cross- national contexts. Recent scholarship focuses on overeducation and wage penalties, gendered labor market outcomes, school to work transitions, and the role of educational and social institutions in shaping life-course trajectories. She has published extensively in leading journals, including the Journal of Labor Economics, Economic Analysis and Policy, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economics of Education Review, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, American Journal of Public Health, Social Service Review and Social Science & Medicine. She recently joined the Editorial Board of Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, a Springer Nature journal. She is the author of four books published by Oxford University Press and Bristol University Press, addressing decision making frameworks in child welfare services, cultural economics, and youth employment strategies.

Professor Jagannathan has received multiple international and national research honors, including Fulbright Specialist awards to Germany, Hungary and Finland. Most recently, she received the 2026-27 Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship to develop and evaluate a nature-based STEM education program in India in collaboration with Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi.

She has also received a DAAD Fellowship to the University of Konstanz, and the Frank R. Breul Memorial Prize from the University of Chicago for outstanding applied policy research. Her Rutgers University honors include the Jerome G. Rose Distinguished Teaching Award, Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring Award, Team Excellence Award and the 2024-25 Award for Global Impact.

Her current and recent projects include large scale evaluations of youth employment and workforce development programs in U.S. cities; comparative European research on youth unemployment and economic self-sufficiency through the EU funded CUPESSE project; and international collaborative research on education, skills formation, women’s health and labor market transitions. She is currently leading a consortium of researchers from Europe in developing cross-national research on nature-based education and STEM learning in the United States and Europe.

In collaboration with Rutgers colleagues and public- and private-sector partners, Professor Jagannathan co-founded Nurture thru Nature (NtN), an evidence based, experimental education program that integrates nature-based learning with STEM and language arts for elementary school students. Rigorous evaluations have demonstrated positive impacts of NtN on academic achievement and student engagement, particularly among students from under-resourced communities.

Professor Jagannathan teaches graduate courses in statistics, econometrics, and research methods, as well as courses in demography, poverty, public policy, and international development. She is deeply committed to mentoring students and to conducting research that informs policy, advances equity, and bridges scholarship with real world impact

Research Interests

• Youth labor markets, overeducation, and wage inequality
• School-to-work transitions and youth employment
• Gender, family, and life-course outcomes
• Public education, STEM learning, and nature-based interventions
• Poverty, public welfare, and child welfare policy
• Program evaluation and applied econometrics
• International and cross-national comparative research on human and social capital development

 Graduate Courses

• Basic Quantitative Methods
• Program Evaluation
• Discrete Choice Methods