"Fertility as Mobility" in India: Salience of Caste, Education and Employment Opportunities

In this dissertation, we use the "fertility as mobility" approach to study the determinants of fertility outcomes in India. More elaborately, we re- examine the Beckerian hypothesis of a tradeoff between number and quality of children with increasing income levels using the India Human Development Survey (2005) data. Our contention is that it is not necessarily the case that couples at higher end of the income scale will have fewer but higher quality children as compared to those lower down the income scale. Drawing on the seminal work of Susan Greenhalgh on "fertility as mobility" in late nineteenth century traditional Chinese society (1989) and modifying Coale's three necessary and sufficient conditions for demographic transition (1975), we argue that even couples lower down the income scale will be willing to invest in quality rather than quantity of children if the institutional framework in terms of education and employment opportunities enhance mobility prospects. We also find considerable persistence of occupations across generations suggesting that increasing occupational mobility across generations particularly for those lower down the caste hierarchy is essential for mobility to be a relevant factor in fertility decisions for disenfranchised castes

Is Education associated with a Transition towards Autonomy in Partner Choice? A Case Study of India

This paper examines if self-arranged marriages (or love marriages) have replaced parent-arranged marriages as the dominant form of marriage in India. In particular, I examine if women of recent cohorts (born around 1980) are less likely to report arranged marriages than women of older cohorts (born around 1956). I also examine if educated women are less likely to report arranged marriages than their less educated counterparts. Results from multinomial regression analysis suggest that women of recent cohorts are more likely to report a parent arranged marriages with their consent. Education is associated with greater autonomy in partner choice decision but it is most strongly associated with parent arranged marriages with consent. I conclude that in a context where a dating culture is not normative, parent arranged marriages with consent may be the best way to accommodate individual choice while retaining some of the traditional parental control over spouse choice

Reforms to Increase Teacher Effectiveness in Developing Countries: Systematic Review, September 2016

RLOsRLOsProvides high-quality evidence on reforms/interventions in education systems aimed at improving teacher effectiveness, at scale. This executive summary provides an overview of that key evidence to answer three review questions: RQ1. What is the evidence on the impacts of reforms/interventions of education systems, at scale, to increase teacher effectiveness on: the quality of teaching and on learning outcomes in low- and middle-income countries? RQ2. What is the evidence on the relationship between educational reforms/interventions for improving teacher effectiveness, at scale, and the quality of teaching and learning outcomes in low- and middle-income countries? RQ3. Where reforms/interventions to education systems to increase teacher effectiveness, at scale, have occurred, what is the evidence on how technical, financial and political barriers have been overcome?ESRC-DFI