Diane Coffey is a social demographer and associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds an MPA and a PhD in public affairs and demography from Princeton.

Her research examines health inequalities in India, including how poor sanitation, maternal nutrition and social factors such as caste and gender affect early-life health and mortality. She co-founded and co-directs r.i.c.e., a non-profit that studies child health in rural north India. With Dean Spears she wrote Where India Goes, which won the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences, and in 2026 co-authored a study on persistently low fertility.