Examining Development Outcomes Differentiated by Social Constructs
Abstract
The first chapter of my dissertation analyzes Affirmative Action in higher education in India to investigate whether making access to college easier can incentivize underprivileged students in the target group to remain in school. I use a difference-in-difference strategy to
find a direct effect of the policy on college enrollments and high-school completion. Using an instrumental variable (IV) strategy wherein I instrument increased access to college with this exogenous policy shock, I am able to establish a casual pathway from increase in college access to increase in school enrollments.
The second chapter presents an analytical framework that can represent Adaptive Preferences, a class of Endogenous Preferences that are dependent on the feasible opportunity set. The model is developed using an expected utility framework that assigns `utility' to pairs of opportunity sets and preference orderings. It is then possible to show under what conditions an individual will choose to adapt (or un-adapt) their preferences. Parallel to the model I present a case study of "Gendered Preferences" as a case of Adaptive Preferences.
In the third chapter, which is part of a joint project with Joseph Cummins, William Dow, and Nicholas Wilson, we analyze data from Demographic Health Surveys (DHS) in 30 Sub Saharan African (SSA) countries for the period 1986-2011 to estimate the relationship between individual fertility decisions and regional aggregates of infant mortality rate (IMR). We find evidence that local regional aggregates of infant mortality have a lagged relationship to individual fertility decisions. A decrease in infant mortality in a region leads to a decline in the probability of birth for an individual woman with a lag of 3 years.