Research

Job Market Paper

Stuck in the Fields: How Rising Temperatures Deepen Gender Inequality in Rural India 

UNU WIDER Working Paper 73/2026

Abstract: This paper documents how pre-existing social institutions shape adaptation to climate change in rural India, resulting in a gendered adaptation gap that is rooted in the interaction between caste-based agrarian structures and gender norms. Using a district-level panel from 1987 to 2012, I find that rising long-run temperatures are associated with declines in male agricultural employment in districts with high Scheduled Caste (SC) populations, communities shaped by centuries of land exclusion and concentrated in agricultural wage labor. In contrast, women in the same districts show no comparable response. A 1 degree C increase in long-run temperature is associated with a 7.6 percentage point decrease in male agricultural employment at the mean SC population share, approximately a 12 percent decline, with no significant effect for women. This divergence is cumulative, driven by gradual temperature rises rather than transitory weather fluctuations. Men transition to construction and urban jobs, while women remain in agriculture with declining wages. For men, caste-based land exclusion created labor markets dominated by landless workers who face negligible transition costs and reallocate when agricultural productivity declines. For women, gender norms impose transition costs sufficiently high to prevent sectoral reallocation. Fieldwork in three SC districts corroborates these mechanisms: women express willingness to leave agriculture but face binding barriers. Major policy interventions, such as public works programs and rural road construction, do not alter the effects. 

Blogs: The Economic Misfit

Presented at: EEA Congress 2025, DuDe PhD Workshop (Poster), German Development Economics Conference 2025, WIDER Development Conference 2025 (Poster), 4th Workshop on Gender and Economics, 4th Development Economists Meet Workshop, MACIMIDE Conference 2024


Publications


Working Papers

UNU-WIDER Working Paper 2026/40


Works in Progress


Doctoral Thesis

Climate Change, Institutions, and Inequality: Evidence from India. Available here.


Reports

Adapting to Climate Change During Displacement: The Role of Livelihood Opportunities and Labor Market Access (with Sonja Fransen)

Final Report, 2025, Refugees International 


Linking Tourism, Local Environment and Waste Generation in Indian Himalayan States : Case-study of Uttarakhand (with Amrita Goldar and Diya Dasgupta)


Final Report, 2020, National Mission on Himalayan Studies (NMHS), Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC), Government of India. 


Policy Research and Consultancies