INDIA HUMAN DEVELOPMENT SURVEY
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elcome to the India Human Development Survey
Forum
A monthly update of socio-economic developments in India by the
IHDS research community
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In this issue...
The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) continues to engage and inspire researchers throughout the world because of the vast array of data it offers through its spectrum of education, health, economy, family, and gender modules for both urban and rural samples across the country. In this edition, the IHDS newsletter focuses on two issues associated with women’s agency—the factors affecting economic outcomes for them, and how the risk of intimate partner violence faced by them affects their children’s human capital.
- The first paper estimates Inequality of Opportunity (IOp) in economic outcomes for Indian women arising from circumstances or factors that are beyond their control such as parental education, caste, gender, religion and region of birth. Based on the findings, the authors infer that parental education and region account for the maximum contribution to the IOp, and thus need to be addressed through policy interventions.
- In the second paper, the authors analyse the impact of mothers’ vulnerability to intimate partner violence (IPV) on children’s human capital. This study, the first to test this link using a nationwide representative sample from a developing country, shows a significant negative correlation between mothers’ vulnerability to IPV and children’s human capital. The authors find strong evidence that children exposed to IPV are more likely to experience corporal punishment at school reflecting signs of externalising behaviour.
- Recent publications using IHDS
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Research Findings Based on IHDS Data
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Inequality of Opportunity in Indian Women
Akanksha Choudhary, Gowtham T. Muthukkumaran and Ashish Singh
Inequality of Opportunity (IOp) in any society is defined as that part of overall inequality which arises from factors beyond the control of an individual (circumstances) such as parental education, caste, gender, and religion, and is thus considered to be unfair and against the meritocratic values of a society. Hence, it needs to be controlled and compensated. The authors estimate the IOp in economic outcomes among Indian women by using the nationally representative India Human Development Survey (IHDS), 2011-12. They include parental education, caste, religion and region of birth as circumstances. The overall IOp in income ranges from 18 to 25 per cent and 16 to 21 per cent (of the total income inequality) in urban and rural areas, respectively. The corresponding figures for consumption expenditure are 16-22 per cent and 20-23 per cent in urban and rural areas, respectively. The authors also estimate the partial contributions of the circumstances to the overall IOp. They find that parental education is the most significant contributor to IOp in urban areas, whereas the region of birth is the most significant contributor to IOp in rural areas. The findings imply that socially and culturally embedded factors like caste and religion, which are more persistent, do contribute to the IOp but the largest contribution is from factors like parental education and
region, which can be relatively easily tackled and addressed with policy interventions.
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Akanksha Choudhary
is a PhD scholar at School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Her thesis comprises essays on Intergenerational Educational Mobility among Indian Women. Her research interests include gender and development, specifically intergenerational educational and occupational mobility, domestic violence, inequality, Indian marriage market composition, widowhood among Indian women, and health of Indian women. She also plans to take up projects on issues related to ageing among Indian women in the future. She holds a Master’s degree in Management.
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Gowtham T. Muthukkumaran
is a PhD student at the School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. His research interests include economic behaviour and organisation, industrial policy and economic geography. His thesis explores different aspects of subcontracting in the Indian apparel manufacturing industry, such as its nature, determinants, the effect of policy and its performance consequence. He has also worked on a research project on the economic geography of different manufacturing industries.
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Ashish Singh
is an Assistant Professor at the Shailesh J. Mehta School of Management, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. His research and teaching interests include economics of discrimination, distribution, social exclusion and underdevelopment. He also works in the areas of public health and demography. He holds a PhD in Economics from Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai.
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The Link between Mothers’ Vulnerability to Intimate Partner Violence and Children’s Human Capital
Sonia Akter and Namrata Chindarkar
In this paper, the authors use the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) to study
t
he impact of mothers’ vulnerability to intimate partner violence (IPV) on children’s human
capital. This is the first study that uses a nationwide representative sample from
a
developing country to test this link. The study uses two measures of children’s human capital—traditional school-based measures of educational attainment and standardised test scores reflecting reading, writing, and arithmetic proficiency. Additionally, their study is the first to use an indirect measure of IPV which aims to overcome under-reporting bias associated with direct questioning-based IPV measures. The results
show a significant negative correlation between mothers’ vulnerability to IPV and children’s human capital. The negative association is more pronounced and robust for cognitive outcomes as opposed to the commonly used school-based measures of human capital. As predicted by their conceptual framework, the negative associations are mediated by mothers’ poor health and disruption of home environment. The authors find strong evidence of IPV-exposed children being more likely to experience corporal punishment at school reflecting signs of externalising behaviour. The indirect measure of IPV stands the test of multiple validity and robustness checks.
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Sonia Akter
is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Previously she was Scientist at the International Rice Research Institute, where she led the Gender Research Team and was the coordinator for gender research of the Global Rice Science Partnership program of the CGIAR (2014-2015). Prior to that, she was Senior Researcher at Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ, Leipzig, Germany (2011-2013). She has worked on numerous policy-oriented research projects in South and Southeast Asia, Australia and Canada. Her three key research interests are climate change mitigation and adaptation policy, agriculture and food security, and gender equity and women’s empowerment. She is presently Associate Editor for the journals
Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies
and
Food Security
. She graduated with a PhD in Environmental Management and Development from the Australian National University in 2010, and holds an MS degree in Economics from York University, Toronto, Canada.
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Namrata Chindarkar
is an Assistant Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore (NUS) and a faculty associate at the Institute of Water Policy, NUS. Her research addresses questions pertaining to sustainable development and social policy. Currently, her three key research themes are access to basic infrastructure (energy, water, and sanitation); individual and household welfare (poverty, inequality, food security, subjective well-being); and gender and development. Her methodological approach is applied econometrics and policy impact evaluation using primary, secondary, and administrative policy data. She has published extensively in refereed international journals, including
Social Science Research
,
Journal of Development Studies
,
Development Policy Review
, and
Public Administration and Development
. She received her PhD from the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, concentrating in international development policy. She holds an MA in Development Studies from the University of Manchester, UK, and an MPhil in Social Sciences from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
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IHDS in the News
- Desai, Sonalde. "A strange paradox for Indian women." The Hindu, 7 March 2019. Link.
- Desai, Sonalde. “Everyone is afraid of data”, The Hindu, 12 February, 2019. Link.
- Mehta, Anupma. “Yes to reservation, no to women”, The Pioneer, 12 February, 2019. Link.
- Mehta, Anupma. “Beaten, battered, brutalised”, The Pioneer, 8 March, 2019. Link.
- Singhal, Karan and Pradyun Mehrotra. "The challenges India faces to be truly open-defecation free." The Hindu, 12 March 2019. Link.
- Bhattacharya, Shrayana John Blomquist & Rinku Murgai. "Poverty to vulnerability: Rethinking social protection." The Indian Express, 27 March, 2019. Link.
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Recent Publications Using IHDS
- Bau, Natalie, Martin Rotemberg, and Manisha Shah. 2019. “Brain vs. Brawn: Child Labor, Human Capital Investment, and the Role of Dynamic Complementarities.” Published online. Accessed 3/26/19. Link.
- Muksor, Alacrity, Priyanka Dixit and M.R. Varun. 2019. “Rural-Urban Differentials in NCD Multimorbidity in Adult Population in India: Prevalence and Cost of Care.” Journal of Tropical Medicine and Health. JTMH-121. DOI: 10.29011/JTMH-121.000121 Accessed 3/26/19. Link.
- Jaffrelot, Christophe, and A. Kalaiyarasan. 2019. “The Political Economy of the Jat Agitation for Other Backward Class Status.” Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 54, Issue No. 7. Accessed 3/26/19. Link.
- Ahamed Mondal, Nasim, Bal Govind Chauhan, and Kacho Amir Khan. 2019. “Regional Prevalence And Determinants Of Alcohol Consumption In India.” International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research. Volume:04, Issue:01 Accessed 3/26/19. Link.
- Kesar, Surbhi, 2019. "Economic Transition, Dualism, and Informality in India". UMass Amherst Economics Working Papers. 261. Accessed 3/26/19. Link.
- Kher J., Aggarwal S. 2019. "Gender Analysis Approach to Analyzing Gender Differentiated Impacts of Coping Strategies to Climate Change." In: Leal Filho W. (eds) Handbook of Climate Change Resilience. Springer, Cham. Accessed 3/26/19. Link.
- LoPalo, M., Coffey, D. & Spears, D. 2019. “ The Consequences of Social Inequality for the Health and Development of India’s Children: The Case of Caste, Sanitation, and Child Height.” Soc Just Res. Accessed 3/26/19.Link.
- Gupta, Romanshi, "Sanitation, Ek Prem Katha: The Impact of Sanitation on Education in Indian Government Schools." 2019. Scripps Senior Theses. 1260. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1260. Accessed 3/27/19. Link.
- Anand, Antara, "Examining The Role Of Intra-Household Bargaining In The Adoption Of Green Technology." 2019. Scripps Senior Theses. 1259. https://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1259. Accessed 3/27/19. Link.
- Saikia, N., Bora, J.K. & Luy, M. "Socioeconomic disparity in adult mortality in India: estimations using the orphanhood method." 2019. Genus 75: 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-019-0054-1 Accessed 3/27/19. Link.
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The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) is a nationally representative, multi-topic survey of 41,554 households in 1503 villages and 971 urban neighbourhoods across India. The first round of interviews was completed in 2004-05; data are publicly available through ICPSR. A second round of IHDS re-interviewed most of these households in 2011-12 (N=42,152) and data for the same can be found here.
IHDS has been jointly organised by researchers from the University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. Funding for the second round of this survey is provided by the National Institutes of Health, grants R01HD041455 and R01HD061048. Additional funding is provided by The Ford Foundation, IDRC and DFID.
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