Dissertation Defense: “Human Capital and Household Formation: "Essays in Labor and Development Economics”, Akanksha Arora, University of California, Santa Barbara
Speaker
Akanksha Arora, University of California, Santa Barbara
Biography
I am a PhD candidate in Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and I expect to complete my degree in June 2026.
My research lies at the intersection of demography, education, and labor markets in developing countries, with a particular focus on women’s economic and social outcomes. I study how large-scale policy changes such as expansions in schooling and shifts in labor market opportunities shape key life decisions such as education, marriage, fertility, intra-household dynamics, and intergenerational outcomes. By combining multiple data sources and leveraging policy variation across cohorts and regions, I examine how institutional changes affect both individual outcomes and broader social structures.
In my job market paper, I examine the long-term effects of school construction on marriage markets in India. I show how increased access to education affects not only women’s schooling attainment, but also marriage timing and patterns of assortative matching.
Title
“Human Capital and Household Formation: Essays in Labor and Development Economics”
Abstract
My dissertation contains three chapters examining how changes in educational and labor market opportunities for women in India affect household formation, marriage, fertility, and outcomes for the next generation.
The first chapter “Educational Expansion and Assortative Matching: Evidence from the Marriage Market in India” studies how school construction reshaped educational attainment and marital outcomes over the long run in India. Using staggered school construction across districts, I estimate the effects of increased school access on women’s education, marriage timing, and educational assortative matching between spouses. I find that greater access to schooling increased women’s years of education, delayed marriage, reduced child marriage, and narrowed spousal age gaps. Beyond individual outcomes, educational expansion also strengthened assortative matching, particularly among less educated groups, suggesting greater stratification at the lower end of the education distribution. However, I find limited evidence that increased schooling meaningfully changed women’s intra-household outcomes as measured by the incidence of domestic violence.
The second chapter “School Construction, Household Formation, and Intergenerational Human Capital in India” examines the effects of school construction on fertility and the formation of child human capital. Using the same staggered expansion in school access, I estimate the effects of increased schooling opportunities on women’s fertility outcomes and children’s education and health. I find that increased school access delayed age at first birth and reduced completed fertility over the life cycle. Educational expansion also generated substantial gains for the next generation, increasing children’s years of schooling, reducing the probability that children fall behind grade level, improving height-for-age, and increasing the likelihood of institutional delivery. While school construction increased parental education and changed the distribution of education across households, I find limited evidence that educational expansion substantially strengthened complementarities between parents in the production of child human capital.
The third chapter “Workfare, Marriage and Women’s Fertility: Evidence from India” studies how increased employment opportunities for women affect marriage and fertility decisions. Using the staggered rollout of India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), I estimate the effects of expanded work opportunities well suited for women on marriage and childbearing. I find that the introduction of the program reduced marriage rates and shifted fertility toward later ages, with conceptions declining among younger women and increasing among older women. Though these are short-run impacts, the findings suggest that improvements in women’s labor market opportunities and outside options can alter the timing of household formation and fertility behavior.
In summary, I find that large-scale expansions in women’s educational and economic opportunities can generate persistent changes in marriage markets, fertility decisions, and household formation, with important implications for the distribution of human capital across households in developing economies.
Event Details
Join us for Akanksha’s dissertation defense, where she will present her research titled “Human Capital and Household Formation: Essays in Labor and Development Economics” We invite you to attend this important academic milestone and learn more about her work in the field. To access a copy of the dissertation here, you must have an active UCSB NetID and password.
