Published & Works in Progress
Under Pressure: High-Stakes Exams and Media-reported Student Suicides in India
With Gitanjali Sen
Journal of Development Economics Paper (PDF)
Abstract:
We estimate the temporal association between high-stakes exam timing and media-reported student suicides in India using geocoded news data. Student suicides are 17.5 percent higher during months in which NEET-UG or JEE-Mains examinations are held, with no comparable pattern around lower-stakes board exams or among adults. The association is concentrated when national entrance exams coincide with board exams, suggesting the salience of cumulative exam burden. These patterns are stronger among girls, in states with higher exam participation, and in urbanised districts. Event-study estimates show suicides increasing immediately before and during exams, while movements around result announcements are weaker and less precisely estimated. We find no evidence that broad shifts in media attention during cyclone or election months account for the pattern, although exam-specific reporting bias cannot be ruled out. In the absence of mental health data, we generate an alternative database to address a policy question and spur future research.
Persistent Effects of a Conditional Cash Transfer: A Case of Empowering Women through Kanyashree in India
With Gitanjali Sen
Journal of Population Economics, September 2024 Paper (PDF)
Abstract:
Launched in 2013 in West Bengal, India, Kanyashree Prakalpa is a conditional cash transfer program incentivizing girls to stay in school and delay marriage. The program provides annual scholarships to 13–18-year-old girls for remaining enrolled in school, and a lump-sum transfer upon attaining adulthood, conditional on remaining unmarried and pursuing education. Using pre- and post-program data and cohort-specific eligibility rules for 15–35-year-old women, and by employing double-differences and triple-difference frameworks, we find that exposed women experience 7 to 8 percentage points higher likelihood of independent movement outside the home and have a lower tolerance for domestic violence. We find the affected cohort to have a 4 to 5 percentage points lower likelihood of justifying wife-beating by husbands. We find suggestive evidence of these results being mediated by access to bank accounts and increased schooling. This underscores the importance of education and financial independence as a pathway to women’s empowerment.
Weighing in on Service Delivery: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from India
With Sebastian Vollmer
Abstract:
This paper examines how legislative redistricting shapes the delivery of public services. We study India’s 2008 delimitation, which redrew state assembly constituencies and shifted the number of seats allocated to districts after a three-decade freeze. Using pre-delimitation malapportionment as a running variable, we implement a regression discontinuity design to estimate the reduced-form effect of gaining legislative weight on health service delivery in rural India. Districts just above the cutoff expanded visible, credit-claimable services—higher state-branded health insurance enrollment, more sub-health centers, and stronger ICDS outreach—and improved antenatal and postnatal care. Centrally branded schemes, higher-tier infrastructure, institutional deliveries, and child health outcomes did not change. Testing for heterogeneity within the RD framework, we find that responsiveness was strongest in historically competitive districts.
Can Media-Reported Sexual Violence Deter Women’s Educational Participation?
With Gitanjali Sen
Under Review
Abstract:
We study the effect of proximity to sexual assault events reported by media on women’s education in India. By combining novel geocoded data on media coverage of sexual crimes with nationally representative micro-data, we find that one standard deviation increase in the lagged average distance to sexual assaults increases the schooling of women by 0.17 years and the chances of middle school completion by 1.05 percentage points. Regions that have more access to television, radio, internet, and cellular devices drive our results. The effect is stronger in localities with higher son preferences, a proxy for gender norms. Our estimates are robust to empirical specifications that remove the effects of reported crimes. The results survive sensitivity and falsification checks. These findings highlight that while mass media can influence the stigma and threat of sexual violence, it can also exacerbate the problem of underinvestment in girls’ education by families in conservative societies.
From Heaps to Insights: Aadhaar’s Role in Enhancing Age Data Quality
Abstract:
I examine the evolution of age data quality in India over the past 30 years using five rounds of nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). My research explores whether the introduction of Aadhaar—a nationwide biometric identification system that serves as proof of identity and simplifies government processes—has played a role in reducing age-heaping, which occurs when individuals are unaware of their exact age and tend to round it to preferred digits. Additionally, I analyze annual reports on state-level Aadhaar coverage to assess its influence on local age-heaping patterns. The results reveal a significant decline in age misreporting in India over time, with a reduced tendency to round ages to multiples of five or even numbers. Moreover, age-heaping at the local level is negatively associated with Aadhaar ownership, and this relationship aligns with state-level variations in Aadhaar coverage. These associations remain robust even after controlling for state- and year-specific unobserved factors and time-varying demographic and economic variables. States with higher Aadhaar saturation, as reported to UIDAI, have experienced a more substantial decline in age-heaping since the system’s introduction. Interestingly, this reduction has been particularly pronounced among older individuals, suggesting that the results are not driven by other interventions, such as the push for formal birth registrations, which have mainly affected younger populations in recent years.
Listen to the NDIC podcast interview here!
Political Competition and Media Bias
With Gitanjali Sen
(Work in Progress)