Working Papers
Maternal Working Hours and Child's Cognitive Development in India: Evidence from Bunching Designs. (Job Market Paper)
When mothers work longer hours, does it benefit children through increased income, or hurt them by reducing the time they spend with their mothers? In this paper, I study the effect of maternal working hours on children’s cognitive outcomes in India. I employ a bunching design for identification and model selection, exploiting the fact that 41% of mothers in my data work zero hours. I find that the number of hours a mother works has little effect on children’s reading, mathematics, and writing outcomes. These estimates suggest a near-zero net trade-off between income gains and time costs.
Living Arrangement and Mental Health among the Elderly: Evidence from India (with Ajinkya Keskar and Sulagna Mookerjee) (draft in progress)
Using nationally representative microdata on older adults in India, this paper examines whether sons—long preferred in the region—improve parents’ mental health through two distinct channels: (i) having a first-born son and (ii) coresiding with at least one adult son. I find no evidence that having a firstborn son improves mental health for either mothers or fathers, despite the cultural salience of son preference. By contrast, living with at least one son is associated with better mental health for mothers, with no corresponding effect for fathers. The results are consistent with gendered caregiving and time-use norms in multigenerational households, whereby sons’ presence alleviates mothers’ stress, while fathers’ mental health is less sensitive to household composition. Estimates are robust to alternative mental-health measures and rich demographic and socioeconomic controls. Overall, the findings disentangle preference from proximity: it is not the mere fact of having a son, but the living arrangement with sons that matters, and primarily for mothers. These patterns have implications for eldercare policy, pension design, and housing programs in aging, patrilocal societies.
Work in Progress
Intergenerational Effect of Adult Literacy Program on Children's Educational Outcomes: Evidence from India (with Opinder Kaur)
Air Pollution and Cognition (with Shiv Hastawala)
Intergenerational Effect of College Expansion Program on Children's Educational Outcomes: Evidence from India