IDEA Working Papers

This paper shows how math-intensive evaluation drives science gender gaps. Using question-level data from a large standardized exam in grades 3 to 10 in India, we find boys outperform girls in mathematics in each grade. In science, girls outperform boys in early grades when few questions are math-intensive, but underperform in later grades as math intensity increases. A substantial portion of the gender gap is explained by question type: girls perform comparably to boys on non-quantitative science questions, but underperform on quantitative ones across all grades. Conditional on previous year performance, girls face a larger penalty from increasing math intensity in science exams. These findings show that gender differences in science are primarily driven by quantitative content in science assessments, helping explain why gender gaps are concentrated in math-intensive science fields. Strengthening foundational mathematics skills and confidence for girls could reduce gender gaps in science, with implications for gender-based sorting in higher education and careers.

We estimate the effect of physiological heat stress on tertiary healthcare utilization and its fiscal cost using the universe of claims from a statewide social health insurance program in Andhra Pradesh, a large tropical Indian state (2007-2015). Exploiting plausibly exogenous day-to-day variation in wet-bulb temperature within districts, we find that a day with wet-bulb temperature of at least 28 °C relative to a day in the reference bin [24 °C, 26 °C), raises the number of daily claims by 3.5%, total disbursements by 4%, and the likelihood that a district records an in-hospital death on a given day by 3.52 percentage points. Utilization is flat across cooler temperatures and rises steeply once wet-bulb temperature exceeds roughly 26 °C. Aggregated over a year, extreme-heat days add about 2.4% to program disbursements -- a lower bound on the fiscal burden. Dry-bulb temperature yields a gradient of the opposite sign, because the hottest ambient days fall in the dry pre-monsoon while physiological stress peaks in the humid monsoon. Studies relying on dry-bulb temperature in monsoonal settings may therefore recover sign-reversed estimates and understate the health costs of a warming climate.

How does strengthened religious identity affect society and politics? We study the impact of "Ramayan," the massively popular televised version of the Hindu epic. We conduct difference-in-differences analyses, measuring Ramayan exposure with TV signal strength in Indian localities at the time of airing in 1987. Localities with higher Ramayan exposure saw persistently strengthened Hindu religious identity, measured by the names given to newborns; increases in Hindu-Muslim communal violence during the Hindu-nationalist mobilization of the early 1990s; and longer-run increases in electoral success for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. A battery of tests indicates these effects reflect exposure to Ramayan specifically, rather than television generally. Areas with greater exposure also saw increased presence of Hindu religious schools, a potential channel behind the long-run persistence of effects.

Despite near-universal school enrollment across many developing economies, the provision of quality education that cultivates lifelong learning and the capacity to apply knowledge in novel circumstances remains elusive. We conduct a cluster-randomized controlled trial in 132 public schools in Uttar Pradesh, India, to evaluate a guided, discovery-based science pedagogy at two intensity levels: a high-intensity Mobile Science Lab (MSL) and a lower-intensity Lab on Bike (LoB). MSL improves motivational beliefs and self-confidence by 0.15-0.18 standard deviations, reduces perceived barriers to education by 0.23 standard deviations, raises engagement by 0.17-0.22 standard deviations, and increases standardized test scores by 0.22-0.34 standard deviations across all subjects. LoB produces limited average effects, with gains concentrated among students completing all sessions. These findings demonstrate that pedagogical design and delivery intensity are critical determinants of multidimensional human capital formation, and that discovery-based pedagogy can shift motivational beliefs, engagement, and achievement in low-capacity public school systems.