Lena Edlund is an Associate Professor of Economics at Columbia University. Edlund’s research focuses on the economics of gender and family, interests that have also led her to evolutionary biology and life-history analysis. Her past research has analyzed the impact of marriage and partner market conditions on sex allocation, with a particular focus on the status of females. She has studied son preference and sex selective abortion, dowry determination, why cities in the industrialized world are more female, and sex allocation at the individual level. Edlund’s current research focuses on maternal conditions and child outcomes. Future work will investigate whether there were earlier health manifestations presaging the observed effects for Swedish children (perinatal outcomes, in-patient records), as well as track this cohort as it ages and as additional outcomes (fertility, mortality, labor market) become available. She also plans to explore the role of parental socioeconomic status in buffering the health and labor market impact of negative shocks to cognitive ability. 

Edlund received her B.A from the Stockholm School of Economics in 1989 and her Ph.D. from there in 1996.