Mayanka Ambade, born on 9 May 1991, passed away unexpectedly on 26 January 2025, aged just 33.
She had already contributed significantly to the IUSSP as a member of the first Early Career Perspectives Panel (2022-2025). In November 2024, as part of the Panel's activities, she organised a preconference workshop at the Asian Population Association (APA) Conference in Kathmandu, Nepal to help early career researchers improve their presentations and receive constructive feedback from peers and senior scholars. This supportive environment equipped the presenters with greater confidence and allowed them to enhance their presentation skills at the main APA Conference.
Mayanka was trained as an economist and demographer. She pursued her undergraduate studies in Economics at Mumbai University, subsequently earning her master's degree and doctorate from the International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, in 2019. After completing her PhD, she worked on the National Family Health Survey and the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, collaborated with scholars from the University of Lausanne and Erasmus Mundus conducting research on elderly health, was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the South Asia Institute of Harvard University, and in May 2023, became a faculty member at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Mandi. Her teaching and research primarily concentrated on healthcare utilization and expenditure, chronic disease risk factors, gender-related issues, and monitoring and evaluation of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals in India. She was an excellent teacher. Her students remember her as a dedicated teacher and compassionate mentor who encouraged innovative thinking and interdisciplinary approaches and excited her students about careers in population sciences.
In her short career, Mayanka made her mark through several notable publications. In the handbook on Aging, Health, and Public Policy, she (together with Rockli Kim & S. V. Subramanian) highlights the socioeconomic and state-wise differences in healthcare costs between public and private facilities in India and concludes that the annual population-level costs of hospitalization are notably higher in southern than other states. In an article published in Population Economics (The Impact of Early-Life Access to Oral Polio Vaccines on Disability), she (together with Nidhiya Menon & S. V. Subramanian) provided evidence of the significant effect of oral polio vaccine access on disability, noting the considerable reductions in the overall incidence of disabilities, as well as in locomotor and polio-related disabilities. In an article published in the Lancet Regional Health - Southeast Asia (Progress on Sustainable Development Goal indicators in 707 districts of India: a quantitative mid-line assessment using the National Family Health Surveys (NFHS), 2016 and 2021, together with S.V. Subramanian, Akhil Kumar, Hyejun Chi, William Joe, Sunil Rajpal, Rockli Kim) she measured key challenges in India's progress, by mid-term, in attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), highlighting several critical Off-Target indicators, and underscoring that spatially, off-target districts are concentrated in the states of central India. Her latest publication in the Economic and Political Weekly (Economic Growth and Women’s Empowerment: A Repeated Cross-sectional Study from India (with Aparajita Chattopadhyay) examines the relationship between women’s empowerment at state and individual levels with economic growth, using NFHS data (2006-21) and observes a positive association between economic empowerment of women, particularly employment and ownership of a bank account and state GDP, but a weaker and more inconsistent association between other indicators of women’s agency and state GDP.
Mayanka had many interests outside the classroom. She enjoyed keeping up with her many friends. She was an avid reader. She loved cooking and experimenting with different cuisines, she loved animals, and she loved travelling. Indeed, she was looking forward to attending IPC2025 and exploring Brisbane and other parts of Australia.
Mayanka is survived by her husband and childhood sweetheart, Sujay; her parents, Sandhya and Nandkishor; her brother, Subodh; and her numerous friends and colleagues. We share their loss.
Aparajita Chattopadhyay
International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai, India