Working Papers
"Male Sterilization and the Persistence of Violence: Evidence from Emergency in India" (Job Market Paper) Previously presented as "When Manhood is at Stake: Evidence from Emergency in India"
With Aditi Singh
Presented at ASREC Australasia 2023, LAGV 2023, ICDE 2023, World Cliometrics 2023, EDGE Jamboree 2023, 2023 European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society, 2nd Diversity and Human Capital Workshop, CEPR Economic History Annual Symposium 2024
Can forced sterilization programs targeting men lead to male-perpetrated violence? This paper investigates the impact of a government-mandated male sterilization program introduced in India on the rise of violence. Launched in April 1976, the program predominantly targeted men and saw heterogeneous implementation across India over 10 months. Using various household surveys and newly digitized historical data sources, we study whether the program triggered unintended effects on violence, measured by crime rates. Using a difference-in-differences strategy by exploiting geographical variation in coercion intensity, we find that an increase in exposure to the program led to an increase in violent crime rates of 7% on average, which persisted over time. Violent crimes against women primarily drive the increase in crime rates, as rapes are increasing by 22% on average. We find that the program was ineffective in reducing fertility, so we hypothesize that a forced sterilization program targeting men may increase violence against women through one main channel: the procedure inducing trauma, impacting perceptions of masculinity. In line with this channel, we see that districts with high coercion intensity correlate with more harmful gender norms: higher levels and acceptance of Intimate Partner Violence, lower bargaining power of women and lower contraception adoption.
Coverage: Ideas for India ; economics that really matters
With Renaud Bourlès, Timothée Demont & Roberta Ziparo
Presented at LAGV 2022, JMA 2022, Workshop in Gender and Family Economics 2022, LAGV 2024, NOVAFRICA 2024, AFSE 2024, ICDE 2024
In developing countries, many policy interventions aim to enhance female entrepreneurship by giving access to cash inflows targeting women. However, important investment decisions are usually made at the household level and may be influenced by local cultural norms about female labour force participation. Using a standard collective household model, this paper studies spouses’ joint investment decisions. We show that the individual optimal investment levels are not necessarily aligned between spouses, though costly utility transfers can realign spouses' incentives. The required transfer is increasing in the stringency of the gender norm against female labour participation, making investment potentially too costly. We test these predictions using two different empirical settings and strategies. First, we exploit original data from a field experiment in India, which gave access to new investment opportunities to women through microcredit. We find that treated women belonging to castes that are relatively more favourable to women working are more likely to invest in home agricultural production and less likely to engage in casual low-wage jobs. Yet, they seem to enjoy lower utility levels in some dimensions such as health and freedom. To the contrary, we do not find any change in the occupation or independence of women belonging to castes that traditionally impose strong restrictions on women's behaviour, suggesting that investment is then too costly. Second, we exploit India's accession to the GATT in 2005 as a natural experiment and use Indian household surveys to study the effect of the termination of quotas imposed on textile exports, a female-dominated activity, on women’s well-being. We find that in regions where women are more involved in agricultural production and have more investment possibilities, removing the quotas increases agricultural work and decreases health indicators for women belonging to castes that are relatively more in favour of women working. Those empirical findings are consistent with our model, showing that, in the presence of gender norms, female entrepreneurship entails intra-household transfers that impact female well-being and can eventually prevent investment.
"Contraceptive Concordance" Revise and Resubmit, Studies in Family Planning
With S Anukriti, Catalina Herrera Almanza & Mahesh Karra
We propose an indicator of contraceptive concordance that identifies the alignment between stated preferences for contraception and concurrent contraceptive behavior. Our indicator departs from traditional approaches to measurement in family planning that infer concordance to be the alignment between women's contraceptive (non-)use and their fertility preferences; indicators that are based on these approaches (e.g. unmet need) have been extensively critiqued for not reflecting women’s actual demand for contraception. We estimate our indicator of contraceptive concordance using data from a cross-sectional survey that was conducted with 1,958 married women in rural India. More than half of all women in our sample (51.2 percent) report that they are currently using a contraceptive method, with almost twice as many users reporting that they are using traditional methods relative to users who report using a modern method. More than 3 in 5 women (60.8 percent) were classified as wanting to use a contraceptive method at the time of the survey. We find that 60 percent of women in our sample are classified to be concordant (either wanted users or wanted non-users), while almost 1 in 4 women (24.8 percent) have a preference for using contraception but are not users (unwanted non-users), and 15.2 percent of women in our sample are estimated to have a preference for not using contraception but are users (unwanted users). We discuss the comparative advantages and limitations of our approach relative to traditional measures and other recently developed indicators.
Work in Progress
"Gender Norms and Child Development: Evidence from India"
With Hélène Le Forner
"A Multicontextual Approach to Contraception: Evidence from Malawi and India"
With Mahesh Karra