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Childhood Exposure to School Expansion and Changes in Inter-Caste Marriage in India

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Abstract

Marriage in India is largely controlled by hanging norms such as arranged marriage and sociocultural markers such as the caste system. Caste endogamy, i.e., marrying within the same caste, remains one of the strongest pillars of the caste system in the Indian society. This study explores whether childhood exposure to dynamics of school expansion in rural India had any causal impact on the increase in ICM exploiting variation in school openings across different locations at different times. A one standard deviation (SD) change in school openings (per village) increases ICM by 5.67%. Exploring the underlying mechanisms, we do not find completed years of education to be the driver, suggesting contact theory, delayed age at marriage, and/or education assortativity are more plausible mechanisms. These results indicate that education, development, and broader modernization forces can be a driver of family change in India, albeit their relevance may be lower than in other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Biography

Luca Maria Pesando is Associate Professor of Social Research and Public Policy at New York University Abu Dhabi (NYU-AD). Before joining NYU-AD, he was an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Demography in the Department of Sociology and Centre on Population Dynamics, McGill University. His research lies in the areas of social, economic, and digital demography. He is interested in issues of family poverty, inequality, gender, social stratification, intra- and inter-generational processes, technology adoption, and interactions between life-cycle events and human capital accumulation. His overarching research aim is to produce better knowledge on the link between family change, gender, and educational inequalities in areas where these dynamics are changing rapidly and scant research is available.

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