Mother's Autonomy and Child Welfare: A New Measure and Some New Evidence

We construct a new, direct measure of female autonomy in household decision-making by creating an index from the principal components of a variety of household variables on which mother of a child takes decision. We then examine its impacts on her child's secondary education in Mexico and find that the children of Mexican mothers with greater autonomy in domestic decision making have higher enrolment in and lower probability of dropping out of secondary school. We use the relative proximity of spousal parents as instruments for relative autonomy to ameliorate the potential endogeneity between autonomy and welfare outcomes. We argue that omitted variables that may drive education and autonomy are likely to be uncorrelated with the ones driving location choice of families given the migration patterns in Mexico. However, the positive autonomy effect is weaker and non-existent for older children and for girls suggesting that gender-directed conditional cash transfer policies may not necessarily hasten educational and gender transition in the process of development.Female Empowerment, Principal Component, Education, Instrumental Variable

Mother's Autonomy and Child Welfare: A New Measure and Some New Evidence

We construct a new, direct measure of female autonomy in household decision-making by creating an index from the principal components of a variety of household variables on which mother of a child takes decision. We then examine its impacts on her child’s secondary education in Mexico and find that the children of Mexican mothers with greater autonomy in domestic decision making have higher enrolment in and lower probability of dropping out of secondary school. We use the relative proximity of spousal parents as instruments for relative autonomy to ameliorate the potential endogeneity between autonomy and welfare outcomes. We argue that omitted variables that may drive education and autonomy are likely to be uncorrelated with the ones driving location choice of families given the migration patterns in Mexico. However, the positive autonomy effect is weaker and non-existent for older children and for girls suggesting that gender-directed conditional cash transfer policies may not necessarily hasten educational and gender transition in the process of development.instrumental variable, education, principal component, female empowerment

Caste, Kinship and Sex Ratios in India

This paper explores the relationship between kinship institutions and sex ratios in India at the turn of the twentieth century. Since kinship rules varied by caste, language, religion and region, we construct sex-ratios by these categories at the district-level using data from the 1901 Census of India for Punjab (North), Bengal (East) and Madras (South). We find that the female to male sex ratio varied inversely by caste-rank, rose as one moved from the North to the East and then to the South, was lower for Hindus than Muslims, and was lower for the northern Indo-Aryan rather than the southern Dravidian speaking peoples. We also find that the female deficit was greater in wheat growing regions and in areas with higher rainfall and alluvial soil. We argue that these systematic patterns in the data are largely explained by variations in the institution of family, kinship and inheritance.

Court-ship, kinship and business : a study on the interaction between the formal and the informal institutions and its effect on entrepreneurship

The study looks at the role of networks in credit provisioning. It examines how the interaction between the formal court system and informal loan networks affect a household’s decision to start a business. Effective contract enforcement is seen to be key to the process of economic development. Network membership, often characterized by caste or ethnicity in India, may work in both positive and negative ways. The paper models interactions between these two types of institutions and their effect on prospective business start-ups. Findings show that in capital poor populations, less efficient informal institutions are crucial for micro-entrepreneurs

Caste, courts and business

This study illustrates how quality of contract enforcement institutions affects decision-making of entrepreneurs. Business enterprises are enabled to flourish through improvements in the role of legal institutions in contract writing. The paper focuses on the impact of the judiciary in India in facilitating new small and medium entrepreneurs especially those from disadvantaged sections of the society. In 2013 approximately 30 million cases were pending in different courts in India. On average it takes 15 years for a civil case to be resolved. Reforms in civil court procedure can lead to lower breach of contract, higher access to capital and building of new capacity

Formal institutions, caste network and occupational mobility

The paper assesses the effect of formal judiciary operations on occupation mobility in two ways: how it affects inter-generational mobility; and, whether improvements in the legal process can enable individuals to move away from traditional occupations inherent to their caste. In India the caste system promotes norms that support inter-generational persistence of occupation. In the absence of market or state provision of insurance, education and enforcement, people have strong incentives to stick to their community profession. Findings show that in the presence of strong formal networks, a person will move to a job in accordance with skill sets irrespective of caste

Beyond the Average: Ethnic Capital Heterogeneity and Intergenerational Transmission of Education

Estimating the effect of ethnic capital on human capital investment decisions is complicated by the endogeneity of immigrants' location choice, unobserved local correlates and the reflection problem. We exploit the institutional setting of a rare immigrant settlement policy in Germany, that generates quasi-random assignment across regions, and identify the causal impact of heterogeneous ethnic capital on educational outcomes of children. Correcting for endogenous location choice and correlated unobservables, we find that children of low-educated parents benefit significantly from the presence of high-educated parental peers of the same ethnicity. High educated parental peers from other ethnicities do not influence children's learning achievements. Our estimates are unlikely to be confounded by the reflection problem since we study the effects of parental peers' human capital which is pre-determined with respect to children's outcomes. Our findings further suggest an increase in parental aspirations as a possible mechanism driving the heterogeneous ethnic capital effects, implying that profiling peers or ethnic role models could be important for migrant integration policies. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved