Research

Publications

"Whose education matters? An analysis of inter caste marriages in India." (with Tridip Ray and Arka Roy Chaudhuri) Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization; 176 (2020): 619-633. 

Media Coverage: The Washington Post, Scroll, The Print, CNN-News18, Business Standard, The Indian Express, The News Minute.

Abstract: Endogamy or intra-caste marriage is one of the most resilient of all the caste based practices in India. Even in 2011, the rate of inter caste marriages in India was as low as 5.82\%. In this paper we explore whether education has any relationship with this age-old practice of marrying within one's own caste. Using a nationally representative data set, the Indian Human Development Survey, we find that, in sharp contrast with the findings in the existing literature on out-marriages in the Western countries, education levels of the spouses themselves do not have any association with the likelihood of their own marriage being an inter caste one. However, couples with a more educated mother of the husband have a significantly higher probability of being in an inter caste marriage. One standard deviation increase in the years of education of the husband's mother is associated with a 10.16\% increase in the probability of inter caste marriage over the sample mean. Our analysis highlights the importance of recognizing the institution of \textit{arranged marriages} in any analysis of Indian marriage markets.

Working Papers

"WHAT CAN(NOT) EXPLAIN THE GAP? Evidence and decomposition of gendered stream choice in India." (with Tridip Ray and Arka Roy Chaudhuri)

Abstract: We use test score and subject choice data of over 2.4 million high school students from three cohorts of students from the Central Board of Secondary Education, the single largest education board with an all-India presence, to first quantify and subsequently decompose the gender gap in the very first stream choices made by students in India. We use our rich dataset to go beyond simple measures of ability, such as previous test scores, and explore whether having an absolute and a comparative advantage in STEM subjects over non-STEM subjects explains a sizable portion of the gender gap in stream choices. We report three broad findings. First, we show that ability related attributes together explain less than 8% of the gender gap in Mathematics, PCM (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) and Biology. Second, among ability-related attributes, STEM advantage terms are the highest contributors to the explained part for male-dominated subjects such as Mathematics and subject combinations such as PCM. However, for female-dominated Biology, previous test score is the highest contributor. Third, the gender gap in stream choice observed in the sample of single-sex schools is much lower than that in the sample of co-ed schools.

"Caste peer-effects on student performance: Evidence from Indian schools." 

Abstract: Peers are an important influence when it comes to student performance and overall outcomes. We use three cohorts of a newly available results dataset from the largest national education board in India, the Central Board of Secondary Education, to study caste peer effects on the test scores of students in the highest school grade in the county. We use cohort-to-cohort variation within a school to causally identify the effects of the proportion of Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the peer group on student performance in the class XII board examination. Using school fixed effects, cohort fixed effects and school-specific linear time trends, we show that the proportion of SC/ST students in the peer group has an overall null effect on the test scores of students. Our results are precisely estimated and we can reject modest sized effects between 0.12 and 0.14 standard deviation. We also show that the null effects do not mask heterogeneous effects by ability: the results are statistically insignificant across the ability distributions of both students and peers.

Selected Works in Progress

"Caste networks, financial expansion and inter-caste marriages." 

"Untouchability and urban spaces."