Research

Job Market Paper

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

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. 


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


Working Papers

Scorching Heat and Shrinking Horizons: The Impact of Rising Temperatures on Marriages and Migration in Rural India  

(with Bruno Martorano and Melissa Siegel)

Conditionally Accepted, The World Bank Economic Review

Abstract: The impacts of climate change can be particularly adverse for women in developing countries, and more so due to the presence of regressive gendered customs and norms in these countries. In this study, we provide novel evidence on how the custom of dowry shapes the long-term impacts of climate change on women in rural India. We examine how increasing temperatures due to climate change are influencing marriage-related female rural-rural and rural-urban migration in India. We find that a 0.1 degree C increase in long-term temperatures is associated with a 2.7% decline in rural-urban and a 1.4% decline in rural-rural female migration. The declining effects are concentrated in districts with a high prevalence of the dowry custom. In these regions, supporting evidence points to reductions in agricultural yields and declining rural incomes, which limit households’ ability to finance dowry payments required to secure grooms, particularly from urban areas. Consistent with this mechanism, we also find that rising temperatures are associated with declining female marriage rates in high dowry-prevalent regions.

Presented at: 18th AFD-World Bank Migration and Development Conference, 23rd Nordic Conference in Development Economics, Applied Young Economists Webinar, American Economic Association Meeting 2025, PSE-CEPR Policy Forum 2024, IMISCOE Spring Conference 2024, RES Annual Conference 2024, 4th Workshop on Women in the Economy, ISI Delhi, Inequality and the Environment Symposium 2024, UNU-MERIT Internal Conference 2023, MACIMIDE Conference 2023, 12th Prato Summer School in Development Economics.


Works in Progress

WP coming soon

Abstract: Climate change is one of the most pressing challenges of this century. This is more so for developing and least developed countries, which have limited means of adaptation and a high proportion of vulnerable populations. In this paper, we empirically study the interconnections between climate and multidimensional poverty. To do so, we rely on gridded climatic data matched with multidimensional poverty data, both aggregated at different spatial levels. We first provide evidence at the cross-country level (for over 70 countries worldwide) as well as the subnational level (for 343 subnational regions in Asia). We then focus on India, looking at regions, districts, and households. We implement several econometric techniques (including alternative fixed-effects specifications, as well as long-differences and difference-in-difference specifications, plus a battery of robustness checks). Our findings indicate that rising (and more variable) temperatures, as well as increased incidences of drought, are associated with higher levels of multidimensional poverty across all analyzed levels. Benefiting from rich micro data at the household level in India, we find that climate-effects are mainly driven by deprivations in living conditions and nutrition. Finally, supporting evidence, exploiting detailed remote-sensing data, suggests that these effects may be (partly) driven by decreases in vegetation (proxied by greenness) and lower economic activity (as proxied by nightlight intensity).



Publications

Mukherjee, M. and Fransen, S. (2024). Exploring migration decision-making and agricultural adaptation in the context of climate change: A systematic review. World Development. 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.