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Impact of political reservation on anthropometric and educational outcomes

Abstract: This study exploits the political reservation based on caste in India as a natural experiment to assess changes in overall and relative levels of child anthropometric and educational outcomes. In a broader sense, this aims to.explore the question of whether affirmative action in political participation enhances health and educational outcomes of the unprivileged castes. I will use DHS data for India and map it with data with switch in the caste of locally elected representative following the policy. Thereafter, I use a DID approach to examine if the policy changed anthropometric and educational outcomes generally and specifically for lower caste children: outcome=β0 + β1 prepost + β2 reservation + β3 prepost∗reservation + controls+e

Detailed abstract: To ensure greater political participation of historically disadvantaged communities in India, the constitution guarantees political reservation in Indian state assemblies and local governments, wherein a certain number of constituency seats are reserved for the marginalized communities (henceforth,SC-ST communities) based on population shares of the communities in the constituency. Over the years, the Election Commission has made several changes in the geographic distribution of the reserved constituencies. I use such changes from a general seat to a reserved seat as a natural experiment to examine if the changes enhance anthropometric and educational outcomes of children in the constituency generally and that of SC-ST children in particular. For a comparison group, I would match with (PSM?) the outcomes of a neighbouring constituency which is unreserved and use DID methodology to estimate the effect of political reservation on anthropometric and educational outcomes of children. The treatment in this case is demarcation of a constituency as a reserved seat, which is exogenous as it is determined by the Election Commission based on relative population shares.I plan to use TCPD data for information on constituencies and reservations and map it with DHS/IHDS data for the corresponding periods to record anthropometric and educational outcome measures of students.Literature: Studies on affirmative actions are done in the context of gender or in the context of caste or the intersection of both. Chattopadhyay and Duflo (2016) using data from a natural experiment of women reservations in village councils in West Bengal (India) finds that women policymakers invest more in infrastructure that is directly relevant to the needs of rural women(water, fuel, and roads) and that women are more likely to participate in the policy-making process if the leader of their village council is a woman. Meyersson (2014) using a RD design with close elections show increased levels of education and political participation among women in Turkish municipalities following election of Islamic party. Lamba and Spears (2013)find that randomly assigned caste reservation in village chairman seats lead to relatively lower level of sanitation in Rajasthani villages. Munshi and Rosenweig (2008, 2013) show that the presence of a numerically dominant sub-caste lead to increased provisioning of public goods.