Dean Spears author biography, plus links to books by Dean Spears.

Dean Spears

Dr. Dean Spears is an economic demographer, development economist, and associate professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin. He is also the founding executive director of the Research Institute of Compassionate Economics (r.i.c.e.) and the director of the Population Wellbeing Initiative at UT-Austin. With Dr. Diane Coffey, he is the author of the award-winning book Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development, and the Costs of Caste. He holds a master's in public affairs and a PhD in economics, both from Princeton. He is an affiliate of the Institute for Labor Economics (IZA) and of the Population Research Center at UT-Austin. His work has been published in top peer-reviewed outlets including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Climate Change, and Demography, and has been featured in The New York Times, National Geographic, Time, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, Vox, The Atlantic, and The Economist.

This biography was last updated on 07/08/2025.

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