Affirmative action and private education expenditure by disadvantaged groups: evidence from India Athira Vinod

Under the Right to Education Act (2009), the Indian government mandated private schools to reserve 25% of primary school places for socioeconomically disadvantaged children. This study examines the policy’s spillover effect on private schooling costs. Using household survey data and a difference-in-differences approach, it compares...   Read More

Gone and forgotten? Predictors of birth history omissions in India Sharan Sharma Sonalde Desai Debasis Barik Om Prakash Sharma

Background: Fertility histories are subject to measurement errors such as incorrect birth dates, incorrect birth orders, incorrect sex, and omissions. These errors can bias demographic estimates such as fertility rates and child mortality rates. Objective: We focus on births missing in fertility histories. We estimate...   Read More

Chronic Absenteeism and Its Impact on the Learning Outcomes of Primary Grade Students in India Charu Jain Ruchi Jain

This paper addresses one of the most critical yet overlooked problems of excessive absence of students in primary grades in India. Considering the intuitive link between students’ attendance and achievements, this paper empirically investigates the incidence and causes of chronic absenteeism while examining the variations...   Read More

Urban Exclusion: Rethinking Social Protection in the Wake of the Pandemic in India Pallavi Choudhuri Santanu Pramanik Sonalde Desai

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequent nationwide lockdown in India that began on March 25, 2020, caused a major disruption in the labour market, leading to the widespread loss of livelihoods and food insecurity. The findings from a telephonic survey of a representative sample of...   Read More

Persistence in physicians’ locations: Long-run evidence from decentralised loan repayment programs Anomita Ghosh

Do temporary labor supply programs cause physicians to move to and stay in undesirable areas? To what extent do these programs improve the health of the elderly and non-elderly population in those areas? I investigate these questions by studying state and local loan repayment programs...   Read More