Vaishali Jain

Job Market Paper

Unintended Effects of Conditional Effects of Conditional Cash Cash Transfers on Child Marriage in West Bengal, India (Link)

This paper examines the Kanyashree Prakalpa (KP), a Conditional Cash Transfer program launched in 2013 in West Bengal, the Indian state with the highest child marriage rates. The program ties benefits directly to marital age rather than relying solely on education. Using difference-in-differences and event study designs with DHS 2019-21 data, I find that KP increased marriage likelihood by 4-6 percentage points (10-18%) for girls aged 16-17 after four to six years of exposure. Early motherhood likelihood rose by 4 percentage points (10-12%) for ages 16-18. The program achieved modest gains in middle-grade education but minimal changes in higher grades. Boys showed no educational effects. These findings demonstrate that conditioning cash transfers on marital age can produce unintended consequences, with families accelerating rather than delaying marriage as girls approach the benefit threshold.

Working Paper

Five Decades of Climate Influence: Impact on Agricultural Productivity in India (1966-2015) (Link) 

Climate change threatens agricultural productivity across the developing world, yet evidence on whether farmers successfully adapt remains limited. This paper examines five decades of climate and technological change in Indian agriculture using district-level panel data from 1966 to 2015, combining ICRISAT agricultural records with hourly ERA5 temperature measurements for rice and wheat across 260 districts. Panel fixed effects estimates show rice loses 9.6 percent and wheat loses 8.9 percent of yields per 100 extreme degree days. Long-difference estimates attenuate substantially toward zero, consistent with adaptation over five decades. Green Revolution technologies explain this pattern through crop-specific channels: for rice, HYV adoption reduced heat sensitivity and the protective effect survives controlling for irrigation and fertilizer; for wheat, HYV provides no independent protection and irrigation infrastructure carries the full adaptation effect. Projected yield losses under SSP5-8.5 reach 3.5 percent by mid-century and 7.3 percent by late century in the absence of future adaptation.

Work in Progress

The Impact of Air Pollution on Health and Mental Well-Being in Developing Countries

Publication

Caste Differences in Child Growth: Disentangling Endowment and Investment Effects 

(with Joseph Cummins, Jingyan Guo, Anaka Aiyar, Neha Agarwal, Andrew Bergmann)

World Development (2024) Link