Research

In response to adverse weather shocks, rural households diversify risk by engaging in formal employment, mostly characterized by off-farm jobs, higher wages, and better protection. I examine the differential gender effect of agricultural productivity shocks on informal employment in rural South Africa. Using rich longitudinal data matched with geospatial climate indicators, I exploit the temporal and spatial variation in district-level rainfall. Results indicate that conditional on working, drought shocks decrease the probability of informal employment on the extensive and intensive margins among females and increase work intensity in formal jobs, especially in the agricultural sector occupations. Male workers are better shielded from the effects of weather adversities. Investigating the role of educational attainment, I find that education mitigates the impact of such shocks and enables women to cope by diversifying into formal work. These results indicate that drought shocks are likely to exacerbate existing gender inequalities in rural labor markets.

Rural households employ a number of strategies to cope with weather variability, including school-work transitions of adolescents and changes in human capital investments. Using rich longitudinal data from rural South Africa linked with geospatial data on climate indicators, we examine the effect of rainfall realizations on the schooling and work decisions and education expenditures of adolescents and young adults. We exploit the exogenous within-individual variation in exposure to district-level rainfall realizations over time. Our results suggest that current and lagged growing-season rainfall increases adolescent human capital investments on the intensive margin among both female and male adolescents. While current rainfall decreases labor market participation among adolescents in non-agricultural households, current rainfall increases female labor supply in agricultural households. We also find that previous-period rainfall positively affects work propensity among all male adolescents. Our results document schooling and labor supply adjustments among adolescents in agricultural as well as non-agricultural households, in response to rainfall fluctuations. 

The disproportionately higher number of boys born per girl in Asian countries like India reflects cultural preferences for sons and gender disparities in human capital investments. We examine the impact of a government-led campaign focused on the survival and education of girls on adult fertility preferences and human capital outcomes of children in India. We leverage a fuzzy regression discontinuity design that exploits the low child sex ratio as the criterion for the implementation of the program in select states. Our results indicate that the program decreases the ideal number of boys wanted by women. Women exposed to the program are likely to value girls more as indicated by the higher ratio of ideal girls to boys, with stronger effects among women with firstborn sons and those belonging to poorer households. We also find an increase in the likelihood of school attendance of children and adolescents, particularly girls. Our results suggest that norm-changing interventions can enhance the intrinsic value of the girl child, especially in regions characterized by skewed sex ratios.

Adolescence is a period of high growth characterized by numerous biological and physiological changes. However, there is scarce evidence on the impact of interventions such as cash transfers on adolescent nutritional outcomes. We examine the effect of the Child Support Grant (CSG), an unconditional means-tested grant provided to age-eligible poor children in South Africa, on Body Mass Index (BMI)-for-age z-scores and the likelihood of being underweight, normal, overweight, and obese. Using rich panel data, our study exploits the changes in the age eligibility criterion implemented in 2010 and 2012 as the source of exogenous birth cohort variation in the receipt of CSG. We employ a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and find that CSG improves female nutrition outcomes. While grant receipt increases BMI z-scores and the probability of being overweight, it decreases the probability of being underweight or obese among female beneficiaries. We find negligible effects on the nutritional status of male beneficiaries, except an increase in BMI at the lowest end of the distribution. While cash transfers may increase the health risks associated with being overweight for females, such welfare programs alleviate extreme forms of malnutrition among females during the critical period of adolescence.

In the paper, we examine the near-term association between state prekindergarten support and county-level rates of female labor market participation and child maltreatment. We find that increasing county-level prekindergarten funding by $1 per capita is associated with an increase of the county employment rate for women with children under age 6 by 0.35% on average, with larger effects at lower levels of absolute per capita funding. Each additional dollar per capita is also associated with a reduction in the county child victimization rate by 0.10 of a child per 1000, on average. The effects on child victimization increase with funding levels, with larger reductions in child victimization at higher levels of per capita prekindergarten funding. 

School closures as a preventive strategy for the spread of COVID-19 has led to a learning disruption among children in most countries. We study the efficacy of a set of pandemic management measures (PMM) adopted by the Government of India in dampening the adverse impact of COVID-19 on children’s education. By adopting a simple theoretical framework, we conduct comparative statics to analyze the effects of policies such as strict social distancing, provision of online classes, and stimulus packages on the net benefit from education. Our study suggests that while mandates of school closure can diminish the adverse effect on the net benefit from education, keeping children away from school for extended periods may hamper their learning potential. We posit that provision of online classes can aid the recovery in decline in net benefits. However, due to the prevalence of digital divide among students, ones facing acute inaccessibility of online classes experience a greater disruption in learning than their peers, who do not face such technological barriers. With the implementation of a targeted stimulus package, learning disruption tends to be lower for technologically deprived students. From a policy perspective, we recommend that a targeted education stimulus package to prevent learning disruption has the potential to decelerate the decline in net benefits from education in times of a crisis. 

There is growing attention among development researchers toward the role of alleviating internal constraints in poverty reduction. Aspirations of the poor are often limited by their social and economic deprivations, and lack of agency to engage in future-oriented behavior. Building the capacity to aspire of children and youth during the critical period of adolescence and young adulthood offers a route out of poverty. This paper develops a framework that measures the capacity to aspire of 10 to 24 year olds in rural India. The framework identifies factors within an ecosystem around an individual that determine their capacity to aspire. We aim to use primary data sampled from rural districts in India to create Aspirations indices at the individual, household, and community level. At the individual level, based on Sen’s Capability Approach, we aim to integrate the concepts of Functioning, Capability, and Aspirations. Through this framework we will identify various leverage points within this ecosystem that can help enhance the capacity to aspire among children and young adults, and contribute to better adult socio-economic outcomes. Our results will facilitate a comparative analysis across districts and highlight the importance of alleviation of internal constraints relative to external constraints in developing the capacity to aspire.