Measuring Women’s Empowerment in the Global South Sonalde Desai Feinian Chen, Shilpa Reddy, Amy McLaughlin

Over the past two decades, we have seen an explosion in research on the topic of women’s empowerment and its related dimensions, and yet much remains to be done in terms of clarifying conceptual pathways and best practices in measurement. This review traces the intellectual...   Read More

Coverage and Nonresponse Bias in Telephone Surveys during the COVID-19 Lockdown in India Santanu Pramanik Bijay Chouhan Manjistha Banerji Dinesh Kumar Tiwari Sonalde Desai Reem Ashraf, Neerad Deshmukh

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, telephone surveys have been used extensively for carrying out studies on health knowledge, morbidity, and mortality surveillance. In order to understand the extent of different sources of non-observation errors in telephone surveys, we compare the distributions of units...   Read More

Urban Exclusion: Rethinking Social Protection in the Wake of the Pandemic in India Pallavi Choudhuri Santanu Pramanik Sonalde Desai

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the consequent nationwide lockdown in India that began on March 25, 2020, caused a major disruption in the labour market, leading to the widespread loss of livelihoods and food insecurity. The findings from a telephonic survey of a representative sample of...   Read More

Lack of access to clean fuel and piped water and children’s educational outcomes in rural India. Sonalde Desai Pallavi Choudhuri

Investments in clean fuel and piped water are often recommended in developing countries on health grounds. This paper examines an alternative channel, the relationship between piped water and access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and children’s educational outcomes. Results based on the second round of...   Read More

Precarity in a Time of Uncertainty: Gendered Employment Patterns during the Covid-19 Lockdown in India Sonalde Desai Santanu Pramanik Neerad Deshmukh

India implemented one of the world’s most stringent lockdowns in response to the COVID-19 crisis. This study examines whether the impacts of the lockdown on employment differed by gender in areas surrounding Delhi. An ongoing monthly employment survey between March 2019 and May 2020 allows...   Read More