Practice Job Talk: Reetika Sindhi, University of California, Santa Barbara

Speaker

Reetika Sindhi, University of California, Santa Barbara

Biography

Reetika Sindhi is a Ph.D. Candidate in Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and is on the 2026–2027 academic job market. Her research lies at the intersection of family, human capital, and conflict, with a broader focus on how socioeconomic environments and public policy shape individual well-being and inequality. Her job market paper, The Long Shadow of Communal Violence: Childhood Exposure and Later-Life Mental Health, examines the long-run mental health consequences of childhood exposure to Hindu–Muslim riots in India.

Title

"The Long Shadow of Communal Violence: Childhood Exposure and Later-Life Mental Health"

Abstract

We study the long-run relationship between childhood exposure to communal violence and women’s mental health in India. Using a newly constructed crosswalk spanning seven decades, we link historical Hindu--Muslim riot locations to respondents’ childhood districts in the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI). Exploiting variation in exposure across childhood districts and birth cohorts, we find that exposure to at least one riot between birth and age~14 is associated with a 2.4 percentage point higher probability of major depressive disorder in later life, or 29 percent of the sample mean. Greater cumulative exposure is similarly associated with worse later-life mental health. The association is strongest for exposure at ages 0--4 and 10--14, consistent with differences in vulnerability across developmental stages. Childhood riot exposure is also associated with a higher likelihood of child marriage, pointing to changes in life-course trajectories as a potential channel. These findings show that even localized, short-lived episodes of communal violence can have mental-health consequences that persist for decades.

JEL Classification Code: D74, I12, I31, J12, J14, J16, N35