Andrew, Alison;
(2022)
Essays on the Economics of Inequalities.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis explores the drivers of socio-economic and gender inequalities in material living standards, agency, health, and education. It combines four self-contained papers. The first chapter contains an introduction which summarizes how each subsequent chapter contributes to our collective understanding of the drivers of inqualities. The second chapter uses a RCT to evaluate two interventions designed to reduce the grip of highly restrictive gender norms on adolescent girls' education, marriage and wellbeing in rural Rajasthan. The first intervention comprised weekly ``girl groups'' designed to give girls the understanding, knowledge and social support to challenge restrictive norms. The second additionally engaged with the setters and enforcers of these norms. The third chapter explores how parents in Rajasthan, India decide how long to keep a daughter in school and when, and to who, to get her married. It combines a stated-choice experiment with a dynamic model of decision making to estimate parents’ preferences and their beliefs about the marriage market return to their daughter’s youth and education. The fourth chapter studies the impact of a nationwide policy (JSY) in India that sought to improve birth outcomes in disadvantaged communities by incentivizing pregnant women to give birth in a health facility rather than at home. The chapter develops a theoretical model of how incentivizing individuals to use healthcare might impact choices and health in the presence of congestion externalities. The fifth chapter uses a RCT to evaluate two approaches to improving the quality of Colombian preschools attended by socioeconomically disadvantaged children. The first provided preschools with resources to hire teaching assistants. The second additionally trained teachers to improve their pedagogical methods. The chapter sets out a model of how teachers allocate their, and their TA’s, time which sheds light on how teachers respond to the increase in TAs and to new information about the process of child development.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Essays on the Economics of Inequalities |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2022. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Economics UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10158275 |
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