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Human Development

A data story on female child marriage in India

  • 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

Phone-based assessment data: Triangulating schools’ learning outcomes

Recent research has shown that schools often report overestimated learning outcomes, as they fear adverse consequences if they report poor performance. In this post, Gupta et al. describe a pilot stud...

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Access to health insurance in India: Direct and spillover effects

Many low-income households in India have been pushed into poverty by high healthcare costs. Uptake of the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, the government-run national health insurance programme for bel...

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Rising obesity in rural India, under the growing urban shadow

According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS), 2015-16, nearly 20% of India’s population is obese. This article shows that the country’s obesity trends have followed the nature of its econ...

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Collective action for environmental health: Evidence from sanitation in rural India

Access to and sustained use of improved household latrines have long been both a challenge as well as a policy priority in India, particularly in rural areas. Recognising the importance of social mech...

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Does non-farm growth in rural areas reduce intergenerational educational mobility?

While the growth of the non-farm sector in a rural economy is known to reduce poverty, it may also exacerbate inequality. Comparing rural India and rural China the study finds that there is lower inte...

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Pollution from coal-based power units and anaemic status of children and women

An extensive literature has considered the impact of air pollution on health. While studies have mainly focussed on outcomes such as general morbidity and mortality, this article evaluates the impact ...

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Designing incentives for mid-level officials in India's public sector

In the Indian public education system, block/cluster resource persons are mid-level officials who are responsible for monitoring the performance of teachers. In this note, Vivek et al. discuss their e...

  • Notes from the Field

Using phone surveys to measure mental health

The public health and humanitarian crises caused by Covid-19 have led to greater recognition of the issue of poor mental health. Although mental health can affect work and quality of life much like ph...

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Does early motherhood impact the development of children?

According to a new UNFPA report, the Covid-19 pandemic might cause 13 million additional child marriages – a key driver of early motherhood. Using panel data from South India, this article shows tha...

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Preferences or expectations? Understanding the gender gap in choice of college majors

A multidisciplinary literature – mostly focused on the US – shows that choice of majors among college students is gendered, and females are particularly under-represented in math-intensive fields....

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Teacher accountability: Non-teaching work over classroom engagement

While the Right to Education Act, 2009 mandates 200 days of teaching for primary classes, the actual number seems to be much lower in government schools. Based on qualitative fieldwork and a survey in...

  • Notes from the Field

Locked out of critical care: Covid-19 lockdown and non-Covid mortality

India’s 10-week long national lockdown to contain the spread of Covid-19 was among the most severe in the world. This article investigates the effects of the lockdown restrictions on healthcare acce...

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Covid-19: How the pandemic evolved in Kerala over the 'unlock' phases

Kerala, the state with the largest number of Covid-19 cases when India entered the lockdown on 25 March, had only 16 active cases on 20 May. However, the second wave of the pandemic in the state, coin...

  • Perspectives

On India’s ‘low’ Covid-19 case fatality rate

India’s Covid-19 case fatality rate is impressively low at 1.7%, compared to the world average of 4%. This apparently superior performance could, however, simply be a product of three factors: the c...

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Rocket Learning

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Ashoka 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...

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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

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