IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/pseptp/hal-01590823.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Women’s Political Reservation, Early Childhood Development, and Learning in India

Author

Listed:
  • Yuvraj Pathak

    (University of Chicago)

  • Karen Macours

    (PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris sciences et lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École des Ponts ParisTech - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

Abstract

This paper analyzes the long-term impacts of reservation of local political seats for women on children's learning and nutritional outcomes in rural Andhra Pradesh. Using the random rotation of seats reserved for women over different election cycles, and three rounds of a panel dataset, we analyze the impact of exposure to political reservation during critical periods in early childhood. The paper shows that the reservation policy for female leaders had the largest impact on learning outcomes in primary school when children were exposed to reservation in utero and very early in life.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuvraj Pathak & Karen Macours, 2017. "Women’s Political Reservation, Early Childhood Development, and Learning in India," PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) hal-01590823, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-01590823
    DOI: 10.1086/692114
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://pjse.hal.science/hal-01590823
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://pjse.hal.science/hal-01590823/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1086/692114?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Irma Clots-Figueras, 2012. "Are Female Leaders Good for Education? Evidence from India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(1), pages 212-244, January.
    2. Lakshmi Iyer & Anandi Mani & Prachi Mishra & Petia Topalova, 2012. "The Power of Political Voice: Women's Political Representation and Crime in India," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(4), pages 165-193, October.
    3. Farzana Afridi & Vegard Iversen & M. R. Sharan, 2017. "Women Political Leaders, Corruption, and Learning: Evidence from a Large Public Program in India," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 66(1), pages 1-30.
    4. Doyle, Orla & Harmon, Colm P. & Heckman, James J. & Tremblay, Richard E., 2009. "Investing in early human development: Timing and economic efficiency," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 7(1), pages 1-6, March.
    5. Klaus Deininger & Songqing Jin & Hari K. Nagarajan & Fang Xia, 2015. "Does Female Reservation Affect Long-Term Political Outcomes? Evidence from Rural India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(1), pages 32-49, January.
    6. Sonia Bhalotra & Irma Clots-Figueras, 2014. "Health and the Political Agency of Women," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 164-197, May.
    7. Tania Barham & Karen Macours & John A. Maluccio, 2013. "Boys' Cognitive Skill Formation and Physical Growth: Long-Term Experimental Evidence on Critical Ages for Early Childhood Interventions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 467-471, May.
    8. Tania Barham & Karen Macours & John A. Maluccio, 2013. "Boys' Cognitive Skill Formation and Physical Growth: Long-Term Experimental Evidence on Critical Ages for Early Childhood Interventions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 467-471, May.
    9. Jere R. Behrman & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2005. "Does Increasing Women's Schooling Raise the Schooling of the Next Generation? Reply," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(5), pages 1745-1751, December.
    10. John A. Maluccio & John Hoddinott & Jere R. Behrman & Reynaldo Martorell & Agnes R. Quisumbing & Aryeh D. Stein, 2009. "The Impact of Improving Nutrition During Early Childhood on Education among Guatemalan Adults," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 734-763, April.
    11. Esther Duflo & Petia Topalova, 2004. "Unappreciated service: Performance, perceptions, and women leaders in india," Framed Field Experiments 00233, The Field Experiments Website.
    12. Raghbendra Jha & Sharmistha Nag & Hari K. Nagarajan, 2011. "Political Reservations, Access to Water and Welfare Outcomes: Evidence from Indian Villages," ASARC Working Papers 2011-15, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    13. Jayachandran, Seema & Pande, Rohini, 2015. "Why Are Indian Children So Short," Working Paper Series rwp15-016, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    14. Timothy Besley & Rohini Pande & Vijayendra Rao, 2005. "Participatory Democracy in Action: Survey Evidence from South India," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 3(2-3), pages 648-657, 04/05.
    15. Esther Duflo, 2012. "Women Empowerment and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 1051-1079, December.
    16. Raghabendra Chattopadhyay & Esther Duflo, 2004. "Women as Policy Makers: Evidence from a Randomized Policy Experiment in India," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(5), pages 1409-1443, September.
    17. Elizabeth Brainerd & Nidhiya Menon, 2013. "Religion and Health in Early Childhood: Evidence from the Indian Subcontinent," Working Papers 65, Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School.
    18. Bardhan Pranab K. & Mookherjee Dilip & Parra Torrado Monica, 2010. "Impact of Political Reservations in West Bengal Local Governments on Anti-Poverty Targeting," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-38, January.
    19. Santosh Kumar & Nishith Prakash, 2012. "Political Decentralization, Women's Reservation and Child Health Outcomes: A Case Study of Rural Bihar," Working papers 2012-18, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Deininger,Klaus W. & Jin,Songqing & Nagarajan,Hari Krishnan & Singh,Sudhir K., 2020. "Political Reservation and Female Labor Force Participation in Rural India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9350, The World Bank.
    2. Deininger, Klaus & Nagarajan, Hari K & Singh, Sudhir K, 2020. "Women's political leadership and economic empowerment: Evidence from public works in India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 277-291.
    3. Ekbrand, Hans & Halleröd, Björn, 2018. "The more gender equity, the less child poverty? A multilevel analysis of malnutrition and health deprivation in 49 low- and middle-income countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 221-230.
    4. Julieta Vera Rueda, 2021. "When fathers are gone: the consequences of paternal absence during the early years," Working Papers halshs-02978563, HAL.
    5. Julieta Vera Rueda, 2021. "When fathers are gone: the consequences of paternal absence during the early years," PSE Working Papers halshs-02978563, HAL.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bhalotra, Sonia R. & Clots-Figueras, Irma & Iyer, Lakshmi, 2013. "Path-Breakers: How Does Women's Political Participation Respond to Electoral Success?," IZA Discussion Papers 7771, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Francesco Burchi & Karan Singh, 2020. "Women’s Political Representation and Educational Attainments: A District-level Analysis in India," Journal of South Asian Development, , vol. 15(1), pages 7-33, April.
    3. Thushyanthan Baskaran & Sonia Bhalotra & Brian Min & Yogesh Uppal, 2018. "Women legislators and economic performance," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2018-47, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    4. Kodila-Tedika, Oasis, 2013. "Femmes au pouvoir et Pouvoir des femmes : Qu’est-ce qui se passe en Afrique ? [Women in power and power of women: What is happening in Africa?]," MPRA Paper 48776, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Bhalotra, Sonia R. & Clarke, Damian & Gomes, Joseph & Venkataramani, Atheendar, 2018. "Maternal Mortality and Women's Political Participation," IZA Discussion Papers 11590, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Iyer, Lakshmi & Mani, Anandi, 2019. "The road not taken: Gender gaps along paths to political power," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 68-80.
    7. Ghani, Ejaz & Mani, Anandi & O'Connell, Stephen D., 2013. "Can political empowerment help economic empowerment ? women leaders and female labor force participation in India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6675, The World Bank.
    8. Sugat Chaturvedi & Sabyasachi & Kanika Mahajan, 2021. "The Importance of being Earnest: What Explains the Gender Quota Effect in Politics?," Working Papers 52, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    9. Bruce, Raphael & Cavgias, Alexsandros & Meloni, Luis & Remígio, Mário, 2022. "Under pressure: Women’s leadership during the COVID-19 crisis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    10. Ghani, Ejaz & Kerr, William R. & O'Connell, Stephen D., 2014. "Political reservations and women's entrepreneurship in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 138-153.
    11. Deininger,Klaus W. & Jin,Songqing & Nagarajan,Hari Krishnan & Singh,Sudhir K., 2020. "Political Reservation and Female Labor Force Participation in Rural India," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9350, The World Bank.
    12. Deininger, Klaus & Nagarajan, Hari K & Singh, Sudhir K, 2020. "Women's political leadership and economic empowerment: Evidence from public works in India," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 277-291.
    13. repec:esx:essedp:740 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Joo, Hailey Hayeon & Lee, Jungmin, 2018. "Encountering female politicians," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 88-122.
    15. Santosh Kumar & Nishith Prakash, 2012. "Political Decentralization, Women's Reservation and Child Health Outcomes: A Case Study of Rural Bihar," Working papers 2012-18, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.
    16. Bhalotra, Sonia & Clots-Figueras, Irma & Cassan, Guilhem & Iyer, Lakshmi, 2014. "Religion, politician identity and development outcomes: Evidence from India," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 4-17.
    17. Vivek Pandey & Ankita Rathi & Deepak Kumar, 2023. "Governance response during COVID‐19 and political affirmative action: Evidence from local governments in India," Public Administration & Development, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 43(2), pages 185-195, May.
    18. Mavisakalyan, Astghik & Tarverdi, Yashar, 2019. "Gender and climate change: Do female parliamentarians make difference?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 151-164.
    19. Peveri, Julieta & Sangnier, Marc, 2023. "Gender differences in re-contesting decisions: New evidence from French municipal elections," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 574-594.
    20. Lahoti, Rahul & Sahoo, Soham, 2020. "Are educated leaders good for education? Evidence from India," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 42-62.
    21. Chaudhry, Zain, 2020. "Mobilizing women voters in Pakistan," PEGNet Policy Briefs 19/2020, PEGNet - Poverty Reduction, Equity and Growth Network, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Nutrition;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-01590823. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Caroline Bauer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.