Pouw’s research focuses on the economics of wellbeing, inclusive and sustainable development and the measurement of wellbeing in marginalised groups. She has more than 25 years of experience in international development research, mainly in Sub‑Saharan Africa and more recently in the Netherlands. She leads and participates in research on the economics of wellbeing and scarcity, social protection, food systems and sustainable development goals. She is also Director of the Amsterdam Social and Economic Wellbeing Institute, which was founded in 2025. She currently manages 2 research programmes: the Amsterdam Wellbeing Dashboard programme and the international Sustainable Development Goals interactions programme.

Education

Pouw obtained her MSc in Economics from the University of Amsterdam in 1996. She then specialised in development economics, was a research intern at the World Bank in Washington D.C., and completed her PhD in Economics of Development at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam in 2008, supported by an individual NWO grant.

About Nicky Pouw

Nicky Pouw  has worked at the UvA since 2008 at the interdisciplinary research programme Goverance and Inclusive Development at the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. With her new chair she is Professor of Economics of Wellbeing at UvA Economics and Business. She has directed and contributed to several national and international research consortia on poverty, health, food security and wellbeing, and has co‑supervised and supervised multiple PhD projects.

Her publications include numerous peer‑reviewed articles and several books, such as Wellbeing Economics: How and Why Economics Needs to Change and Introduction to Gender and Wellbeing in Microeconomics. She is active in the wider academic and policy community. She is a member of the NWO Domain Board Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) and platform member of INCLUDE, an independent knowledge platform dedicated to advancing evidence-based policymaking with a primary focus on Africa, where she works on themes of economic justice, inclusion and diversity.