Drivers of change: How intra-household preferences shape employment responses to gender reform (with Chaza Abou Daher, Erica Field, and Kate Vyborny) Revisions requested at American Economic Review.
Billions of women still face legal barriers to economic inclusion, yet it is unclear whether lifting these barriers is sufficient to enhance their economic participation. We conduct a field experiment to quantify the impact of a major legal reform - the lifting of the Saudi women’s driving ban - on women’s employment by randomizing rationed spaces in driver’s training. Two years later, women in the treatment group are 61% more likely to drive, 19% more likely to leave the house unchaperoned, and 35% more likely to be employed. However, they are also 19% more likely to require permission to make purchases. These patterns vary systematically with marital status: although physical mobility increases for all women, treatment effects on employment are only observed among never-married and widowed women, who negotiate employment with their fathers. Married and divorced women with children, over whom husbands and ex-husbands have leverage, actually exit the labor force and experience decreased spending autonomy. We posit that these patterns reflect differences in male family members’ support for women’s employment. They provide evidence that men’s resistance to wives’ employment poses a binding constraint to female labor force participation when legal restrictions are relaxed, but also that men are more open to granting their daughters economic rights, as has been posited in the literature. The results underscore the importance of intra-household responses to gender reforms, which have the potential to counteract legal gains in women’s freedoms, and help explain why potential economic gains from lifting discriminatory laws often go unrealized.
Social Accountability and Health: Evidence from Innovative Governance Interventions in Uttar Pradesh (with Manoj Mohanan, Harsha Thirumurthy, and Vikram Rajan)
Community-based accountability interventions have shown promise in improving public service delivery in low-income countries. However, their effectiveness has varied across study settings and there is limited evidence on the relative importance of information provision versus facilitation of collective action. We study the health impacts of accountability interventions implemented in rural communities by the government of Uttar Pradesh, India. Using village-level randomization, we find no impacts on child mortality but large improvements in immunization rates, treatment of childhood diarrhea, and institutional delivery. Our findings suggest that information provision combined with facilitation had larger effects than information provision alone.
Visualizing COVID Restrictions: Activity Patterns Before, During, and After COVID-19 Lockdowns in Uttar Pradesh, India (with Gabriel Varela, Dana Pasquale, Manoj Mohanan, James Moody). Socius, Vol 8. (2022)
Caste and Religion-Based Wage Discrimination in the Indian Private Sector: Evidence from the Indian Human Development Survey (with Nikolaus Axmann, and Victor Cuspinera Contreras). The Review of Black Political Economy,43(2), 165–175. (2016)
Poverty in Global Perspective (with Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe). The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Gender and Sexuality Studies (eds A. Wong, M. Wickramasinghe, r. hoogland and N. A. Naples). (2016)
Bangladesh Gender Diagnostic Report - World Bank South Asia Region Gender Innovation Lab (SARGIL)
Two years, two percent: why are Saudi women still not driving? (with Saba Ali, Rand Alotaibi, Erica Field, Kate Vyborny, and Chaza Abou Daher). EPOD, 2021.