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
- Articles
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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Leaders and citizens: Women’s political participation in India
Women’s political participation has emerged as a key element of the discourse around the upcoming state elections in India. In this post, Nalini Gulati and Ella Spencer explore the evidence on vario...
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Nalini Gulati Ella Spencer
- 31 March, 2021
- Perspectives
Social identity, health networks, and health knowledge
Health knowledge, driven by education, is a critical factor for the achievement of good health outcomes. Analysing data from the Indian Human Development Survey 2004-05, this article examines how know...
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Niels-Hugo Blunch Nabanita Datta Gupta
- 17 March, 2021
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Matter of mobility: Barriers to women’s work and education, and the dangers at home
As countries across the world implemented lockdowns to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, both women and men have been largely confined to their homes but with differential impacts. In this post, Nikita...
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Nikita Sharma
- 16 March, 2021
- Perspectives
Gendered breadwinner norms and work decisions
The male breadwinner norm – the idea that a man must earn more than his wife – can potentially impact labour-market outcomes of married women. Using nationally representative data from India for t...
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Sakshi Gupta
- 08 March, 2021
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‘Missing’ women in economics academia in India
Economics continues to be among the male-dominated disciplines in the US and Europe. Collating and analysing data from India on university faculty, research presentations at a major annual conference,...
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Upasak Das Ambrish Dongre Karan Singhal
- 05 March, 2021
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International Women’s Day 2021
8 March is observed across the world as International Women’s Day. This year the theme is “choose to challenge”, focussing on the choice to challenge gender bias and inequality, celebrate women'...
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I4I Team
- 03 March, 2021
- Perspectives
Employment entry and exit by women in India
While India’s low female labour force participation has been studied extensively in the recent literature, an aspect that has received insufficient attention is the dynamic nature of employment – ...
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Soham Sahoo Sudipa Sarkar
- 19 January, 2021
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Covid-19 spread: Does social and economic diversity matter?
Arresting the spread of Covid-19 requires collective action by communities, which is likely to be more challenging in settings with high diversity. Using district-level data from India, this article e...
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Upasak Das Udayan Rathore Prasenjit Sarkhel
- 15 January, 2021
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Webinar: Growing concern around violence against women
On 25 November 2020, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the India Programme of the International Growth Centre – in collaboration with the Asian Development Researc...
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Michele Mary Bernadine Nalini Gulati
- 10 December, 2020
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Caste gaps in behaviour and personality traits: A study of university students
While numerous studies have examined gaps in health and educational outcomes across castes, there is little evidence on caste gaps in behavioural preferences and personality traits. Based on incentivi...
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Utteeyo Dasgupta Subha Mani Smriti Sharma Saurabh Singhal
- 04 December, 2020
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Leveraging behavioural insights for informed policymaking
Application of behavioural insights – backed by decades of research in behavioural economics and social psychology – to the design and implementation of social programmes is gaining traction in I...
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Steven Walker
- 03 December, 2020
- Perspectives
International day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
25 November is observed by the United Nations as the International day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. This year, there is a particular focus on the alarming increase in domestic violen...
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I4I Team
- 25 November, 2020
- Perspectives
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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
- Articles
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
- Articles
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