Vishal Kumar Rai is a Research Associate at the Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP). He has submitted his PhD thesis in Economics at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi, and is awaiting his doctoral defence. He holds a Master’s degree in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics. He contributed to a Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India-funded research project on health, endogenous retirement, and annuity demand.

His research focuses on life-cycle decision-making under environmental and epidemiological risks, with interests in health economics, labour economics, public economics, and macroeconomics. His research employs dynamic structural models to study retirement behaviour, health investment, and labour supply.