Currie received a B.A. in economics in 1982 and a M.A. in economics in 1983 from the University of Toronto. She then pursued graduate studies at Princeton University, where she received a Ph.D. in economics in 1988.[citation needed]
Although Currie published several studies early in her career about collective bargaining in the public sector, she is best known for her work on the impact of poverty and government anti-poverty policies on the health and well-being of children over their life cycle. Beginning the early 1990s, she was one of the first economists to evaluate such programs from the point of view of the child. She has written about early intervention programs, expansions of Medicaid program, public housing and food and nutrition programs. In work with Duncan Thomas and Eliana Garces, she showed that children in Head Start made gains relative to their own siblings in terms of both test scores and longer-term measures of attainment.[10] In work with Jonathan Gruber, she showed that expansions of public health insurance to low income women and children improved access to care and reduced infant mortality.[11][12] Research on the effects of the safety net on American children is reviewed in her book, "The Invisible Safety Net."[13][14] She also more recently has advocated for cash transfers, in conjunction with other safety nets, given their helpfulness in raising families out of poverty.[15]
Currie has investigated broader socioeconomic determinants of fetal and child health, including health care,[16]child maltreatment,[17][18] nutrition,[19]environmental pollution,[20][21][22] and maternal education.[23][24][25] Her work showing that the adoption of EZ-Pass improved infant health in Pennsylvania and New Jersey received wide attention.[26] Some of her work showing disparities in fetal exposure to pollution and their consequences is summarized in her 2011 Ely lecture to the American Economics Association.[27] With Anna Aizer and Hannes Schwandt, she has shown that inequality in mortality is falling among U.S. children, at the same time that inequality in mortality among adults has been increasing, and attributed this improvement to the protective effect of safety net programs.[28][29] Her work on health care has focused on differences in physician behavior as one of the key determinants in variation in the care both children and adults receive.[30]
Overall, her work shows that early childhood, including the fetal period, is of great importance for the development of children's productive capabilities (their 'human capital') and that programs targeting early childhood can be particularly effective in remediating childhood disadvantage.[31]
She is also a strong advocate for mental health, especially because it is strongly overlooked when compared to physical health. When looking at children who have mental health disabilities, when compared to some common physical disabilities, have a greater negative impact on the person in the future. Due to the fact that there are very rarely mental health disabilities that are easy to treat when compared to physical disabilities, her work looks into the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of treating mental health disabilities in children.[15]
This work represents a departure from earlier work on collective bargaining in the public sector.[32][33]
^Currie, Janet; Gruber, Jonathan (December 1996). "Saving Babies: The Efficacy and Cost of Recent Expansions of Medicaid Eligibility for Pregnant Women". The Journal of Political Economy. 104 (6): 1263–1296.
^Currie, Janet; Gruber, Jonathan (May 1996). "Health Insurance Eligibility, Utilization of Medical Care, and Child Health". The Quarterly Journal of Economics. 111 (2): 431–466.
^Currie, Janet (1995). Welfare and the Well-Being of Children. Chur Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers.
^Currie, Janet (Spring 2006). The Invisible Safety Net: Protecting the Nation's Poor Children and Families. Princeton University Press.
^Bhattacharya, Jayanta; Currie, Janet; DeLeire, Thomas; Haider, Steven (July 2003). "Heat or Eat? Income Shocks and the Allocation of Nutrition in American Families". American Journal of Public Health. 93 (7): 1149–1154.
^Currie, Janet; Walker, Reed; Voorheis, John (January 2023). "What Caused Racial Disparities in Particulate Exposure to Fall? New Evidence from the Clean Air Act and Satellite-Based Measures of Air Quality". American Economic Review. 113 (1): 71–97.
^Currie, Janet; Moretti, Enrico (November 2003). "Mother's Education and the Intergenerational Transmission of Human Capital: Evidence from College Openings". Quarterly Journal of Economics. 118 (4): 1495–1532.
^Currie, Janet; Hyson, Rosemary (May 1999). "Is the Impact of Health Shocks Cushioned by Socioeconomic Status? The Case of Birth Weight". American Economic Review. 89 (2): 245–250.
^Currie, Janet (March 2009). "Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise? Socioeconomic Status, Poor Health in Childhood, and Human Capital Development". Journal of Economic Literature. 47 (1): 87–122.