Research | Mysite

Publication:

The Impact of an Adult Education Program for Mothers: Evidence from India (with Ashwini Deshpande, Christopher Ksoll and Annemie Maertens) - Economic Development and Cultural Change.

We use a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the impacts of an adult education program, targeting mothers in rural India, on investments in health and education of one's children and family one year later. The program increased involvement in their children's education (but did not affect schooling outcomes), and impacted investment in family health and hygiene practices. We note that the program made the mothers more knowledgeable about health matters and document positive changes in some measures of bargaining power. The program increased the mothers' confidence in dealing with people outside their family, and increased their mobility.

Working Papers:

Improving Quality of Schooling: India's National Education Policy and Lessons From China (with Naveen Kumar)

- UNU-WIDER Working Paper (Under Review)

This paper documents the state of elementary education in the two largest developing economies - India and China - since the 1960s. Education reforms in both countries have succeeded in improving literacy, achieving universal primary schooling, and raising years of schooling over different time horizons. At the start of the 21st Century, China shifted its focus from `quantity' to `quality' by implementing reforms aimed at improving the curriculum of schools, recruitment and training of teachers, and infrastructure of rural schools. Two decades later, India is designing reforms to improve the quality, equity, and efficiency of schooling with the new National Education Policy (NEP). NEP considers early childhood education, foundational learning, allocation of school resources, and recruitment and management of teachers as areas that need reforms. It is a step in the right direction but India should pay attention to the experimental evidence to design effective reforms.

Impact Of The Right To Education On School Enrolment Of Children With Disabilities - UNU - WIDER Working Paper

I evaluate the impact of the right to education from the passing of the Right to Education Act in India in 2009. This Act guaranteed free education to children aged 6–14 years, including children with disabilities. Given that the school participation deficit associated with disability is large, I provide results that are a relief to policy-makers. I use an event study estimation and an interrupted time series research design and find that the Right to Education Act led to a 60 per cent increase in schooling among children with disabilities within three years. The estimate is driven by enrolment across all grades. I also provide suggestive evidence that the estimate is not driven by an increase in the number of schools or in disability-friendly ramps within schools.

Work In Progress:

Impact Of Vertical School Consolidation On School Choice, Dropouts, Exam Taking And Achievement

I examine the impact of vertical school consolidation on school choice, dropouts, exam taking, and achievement by exploiting its staggered roll-out in the Indian state of Rajasthan. My analysis reveals that consolidation of government grade 1–5 schools with government grade 6–10 schools increases the average school size, number of classrooms, teachers, and grades in government schools. Furthermore, I find that the preference for government schools declines, particularly among grade 1–5 children, and the number of dropouts among grade 1-5 children increases. My results also demonstrate that consolidation does not affect the number of takers or high scorers in primary and middle school completion exams. My heterogeneity analyses show that the impact of consolidation does not vary by gender or by grade within the grade 1-5 or grade 6-8 groups. However, the negative impacts of school consolidation are more pronounced among children from Scheduled Caste households.

Literacy Created Highly Satisfied Women: RCT Evidence From India

Fourteen percent of the people in the world are illiterate and this number is alarming since it contradicts the progress the world economies have been making through the 21st century. Adult literacy programs (ALPs) have been a popular intervention in developing communities which have high adult illiteracy rates. Multiple aspects of ALPs have been explored in prior literature but this is the first paper to look at its impact on
one's life-satisfaction. This paper makes use of a randomized control trial on an ALP which was popularly known as the "world's fastest literacy program" to show that ALP participation creates highly satisfied women. The paper further argues that this impact is even larger for optimistic women, women with some exposure to formal schooling and for younger women. The underlying mechanisms identified include an increase in
women's literacy, numeracy and social interaction skills which have led to an increased respect for these women within their families and to an increase in their confidence in interacting with people outside their family.