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Human Development

Lighting the path to learning: Can electricity boost children’s test scores?

  • Articles

Reflections on how the New Education Policy plays out in the classroom

The National Education Policy, 2020 emphasises the acquisition of foundational literacy and numeracy by Standard 2. Yet, little is known about how the related initiatives have translated into changes ...

  • Notes from the Field

The wide-ranging benefits of India’s Public Distribution System

India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) is the world’s largest food transfer programme and India’s most far-reaching social safety net, accounting for 60% of the country’s social assistance b...

  • Articles

Network membership and demand for health insurance

Despite being free and having liberal eligibility criteria, the adoption of public health insurance in India remains low. This article examines how informal networks influence adoption behaviour, in t...

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Nutritional penalty of motherhood: Can midday meals for children also improve their mothers’ health outcomes?

Midday meals provide a nutritional safety net for children and improve their learning outcomes and attendance. Nikita Sharma argues that spillover benefits might also exist for mothers of the children...

  • Perspectives

Access to clean drinking water and women’s safety in India

In this study, Sekhri and Hossain use district-level data to find empirical evidence that groundwater scarcity results in an increase in sexual violence against women. They argue that in households wi...

  • Articles

Foundational learning outcomes: More recovery than loss

Sharing data from the recently released ASER 2022, Wilima Wadhwa discusses the trends in primary school enrollment and learning during the pandemic. Using data collected from Karnataka, Chhattisgarh a...

  • Perspectives

Herself, and her child: Are they worse off due to Covid-19?

Lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19 led to loss of employment and income. They also created greater food insecurity, with women and children being more vulnerable to such shocks. In t...

  • Articles

Old habits and new norms

As schools reopen and memories of the pandemic fade, Madhav Chavan takes stock of practices and ideas that have become the ‘new normal’. He highlights the increase in enrollment and absence of lea...

  • Perspectives

Sweet cash: Women’s demand for healthcare in developing countries

Agrawal et al. explore the role of gender-based preferences for demand of healthcare. Using CPHS data they find that the positive income shock – generated by a change in the mandated rates of contri...

  • Articles

Empowering patients with information to improve hospital accountability

Despite the expansion of free healthcare for the poor throughout India, many hospitals continue to charge patients out-of-pocket fees. In this study, Dupas and Jain investigate whether informing patie...

  • Articles

The unintended positive consequences of India’s safe motherhood programme

India’s flagship maternal health intervention, Janani Suraksha Yojana, provided conditional cash transfers to women opting for institutional deliveries. In this study, Chatterjee and Poddar document...

  • Articles

Low-tech and teacher support interventions during school closures

School closures during Covid-19 significantly impacted early childhood education, especially in households without sufficient parental engagement. Using data from households affiliated with Balwadis a...

  • Articles

A data story on female child marriage in India

In the eighth post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Shubham Mudgil and Swathi Rao from The Quantum Hub use a novel dataset based on NFHS-5 to present data highl...

  • Perspectives

Time poverty for girls: Implications for educational attainment and workforce participation

In the fifth post of I4I’s month-long campaign to mark International Women’s Day 2023, Priyadarshini et al. leverage time use data from a study in Bihar, and find that girls take on a majority of ...

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Understanding intergenerational educational mobility with conflicting evidence

There is a growing literature on intergenerational educational mobility that explores how parental education influences the educational attainment of children. This article compares three empirical mo...

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Recent Contributors

Deepak

Deepak Kumar

ASER Centre

Shweta

Shweta Bhutada

ASER Centre

Somdeep

Somdeep Chatterjee

Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta

Shiv

Shiv Hastawala

State University of New York at Binghamton

Jai

Jai Kamal

Indian Institute of Management Jammu

Suman

Suman Bhattacharjea

ASER Centre

Akanksha

Akanksha Bisht

ASER centre

Rashmi

Rashmi Barua

Jawaharlal Nehru University

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Most Popular Human Development Posts

Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: District-level estimates from Census 2011

The 2011 Indian Census data show a higher growth rate of Muslim population compared to the Hindu population. This article provides an in-depth picture of Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials at the di...

  • Articles

Understanding India’s mental health crisis

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, several reports have indicated a worsening of mental health issues among individuals across age groups. In this post, Michele Mary Bernadine examines the stat...

  • Perspectives

Ten steps to transform the quality of education in India

In this article, Sridhar Rajagopalan, Managing Director of Educational Initiatives, suggests 10 initiatives that can help transform the quality of education in India.

  • Perspectives