27 November, 2025Is Language a bridge or barrier? Linguistic distance and the health of women and children
India is a linguistically diverse country with a large flow of internal migrants. This article demonstrates that the greater the “linguistic distance” between a woman’s native language and the d...
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Advaith Jayakumar Anisha Sharma 
10 November, 2025
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Markets, marriage, and norms: Understanding female labour force participation in India
Despite recent gains in India’s female labour force participation rate due to rural self-employment, women’s work in the country remains constrained by factors on both the demand and supply side. ...
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Farzana Afridi
- 03 November, 2025
- Perspectives
How dowry shapes migration decisions in modern India
While migration is a critical driver of economic development, it may disrupt arrangements wherein parents rely on sons for old-age support. Leveraging new survey data, this article shows that at the t...
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Natalie Bau Gaurav Khanna Alessandra Voena
- 23 October, 2025
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Gender norms and competitiveness: Evidence from the tribes of Northeast India
The under-representation of women in leadership positions is often attributed to systematic gender differences in the inclination to compete. Do gender-balanced social norms have the potential to clos...
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Stefan Klonner Sumantra Pal Christiane Schwieren
- 24 November, 2020
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Mental health disparities in India
While a large, multidisciplinary literature focusses on disparities in physical health across social groups, the mental health dimension remains invisible. Analysing data from a WHO survey conducted i...
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Diane Coffey Aashish Gupta Meghana Mungikar
- 13 November, 2020
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A road map for closing gender gaps in Bihar: Gender Responsive Budgeting
The state of Bihar was one of the early starters on Gender Responsive Budgeting in India, having published its first ‘Gender Budget Statement’ in 2008-09. Based on a review of the literature on th...
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Shrijna Dixon Yamini Mishra
- 03 November, 2020
- Perspectives
A permanent cordon-sanitaire: Dalits and Muslims in urban India
Near-perfect segregation and hierarchical ordering of residential space, based on caste or religious identity, is a well-known feature of rural India. Studies have also documented the persistence of s...
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Naveen Bharathi Deepak Malghan Andaleeb Rahman
- 09 October, 2020
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Does the gender of your co-worker matter? Evidence from call centres
Several theories suggest that gender integration in the workplace may have negative effects in gender-segregated societies. Based on an experiment conducted with 765 employees in call centres located ...
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Deepshikha Batheja
- 05 October, 2020
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Nakusha: Son preference, ‘unwanted’ girls, and gender gaps in schooling
Indian society is commonly associated with a strong cultural preference for sons. Using nationally representative data from 1986-2017, this article examines parental investment in the education of son...
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Ashwini Deshpande Apoorva Gupta
- 25 September, 2020
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Atrocities, murders, and untouchability: Measuring caste-based discrimination
How can we best measure inter-caste tension and discrimination in India? In this post, Victoire Girard highlights the limitations of using statistics compiled under the Prevention of Atrocities Act, w...
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Victoire Girard
- 23 September, 2020
- Perspectives
Covid-19: ‘Shadow pandemic’ and violence against women
Violence against women is a problem worldwide, with economic costs ranging from 1% to 4% of global GDP. This article investigates if the magnitudes and types of violence against women have changed dur...
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Saravana Ravindran Manisha Shah
- 17 September, 2020
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Demographic shocks and female labour force participation: Evidence from 1918 flu pandemic
The Influenza pandemic of 1918 killed about 5% of India’s population. This article finds that districts most adversely affected by influenza mortality saw a temporary increase in the country’s fem...
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James Fenske Bishnupriya Gupta Song Yuan
- 17 August, 2020
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How mothers-in-law influence women’s social networks and reproductive health
Restrictive social norms and strategic constraints imposed by family members can limit women’s access to and benefit from social networks. Based on a survey in rural Uttar Pradesh, this article show...
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S Anukriti Catalina Herrera-Almanza Mahesh Karra
- 03 August, 2020
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Does caste identity still matter for occupational choice?
In today’s India, to what extent do people avoid jobs solely due to their sense of caste identity? This article discusses an experiment in rural Odisha that involves offering one-day jobs to workers...
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Suanna Oh
- 29 July, 2020
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Son preference, maternal health, and women’s survival: A cross-cultural analysis
Lifetime risk of maternal death in developing countries is 33 times higher as compared to the developed world. This article examines the role of cultural norms in influencing maternal morbidity and mo...
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Neha Agarwal Annamaria Milazzo
- 16 July, 2020
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Tweets by Ideas4IndiaMost Popular Social Identity Posts
Hindu-Muslim fertility differentials in India: An update
Building on past research, Saswata Ghosh and Pallabi Das estimate the state- and district-level fertility differentials between Hindus and Muslims using data from the latest round of the NFHS. They sh...
- Pallabi Das Saswata Ghosh
- 18 April, 2023
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A division of labourers: Caste identity and efficiency in India
Castes in India are closely associated with certain occupations and determine the jobs done by millions. This study uses a new dataset to show that a large proportion of workers still work in their ca...
- Guilhem Cassan Daniel Keniston Tatjana Kleineberg
- 18 November, 2022
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Measuring caste inequality across Indian states
Although recent research on inequality shows that upper castes have the highest levels of material well-being, there is a wide variation in caste inequality across India. Measuring three forms of cast...
- Poulomi Chakrabarti
- 13 September, 2021
- Articles