Divya Balasubramaniam Graduate Student Department of Economics The University of Georgia    • Home  • CV  • Research  • Teaching  • Personal  • Contact and Links

Research My dissertation focuses on accessibility to public goods and child health in the developing world. We empirically test how social and religious divisions play a crucial role in accessing water in Rural India. In my job market paper, I study how improved access to safe water and sanitation affects the nutritional status of children in India. My current research project focuses on female autonomy and its implications for maternal healthcare seeking behavior and child health. My other research projects include studying the effectiveness of free clinics in the state of Georgia, funded by the National Institue of Health. I work as a research assistant to Dr. Phaedra Corso, Head, Department of Health Policy and Management in the College of Public Health at UGA. Dr. Corso is the principal investigator. We use cost benefit analysis (CBA) to assess the implications for free clinics in Brunswick, and Gainseville, Georgia. On this page, you can find abstracts for my current projects. The projects include: 1)Three essays from my dissertation, and 2) Other research projects. 1) Dissertation: Access to Drinking Water in India: Three essays on the Current Problems and Future Prospects "The Distributional Consequences of Access to Safe Water and Sanitation on Child Nutrition in India: A Quantile Regressions Approach." (Job Market Paper) This paper examines the direct impact of access to safe water and sanitation (SWS) on child nutrition in India using the 2005-06 Demographic Health Survey dataset. In addition, the paper also tests for “indirect” effects such as diarrhea on child nutrition. The traditional ordinary least squares estimation may undermine important information regarding the partial effect of the interest variable on the health outcome variables. Therefore, this paper follows the quantile regressions approach. Using the weight-for-height, height-for-age, and weight-for-age z-score measures of malnutrition, I find that the direct and indirect effects of water and sanitation have significant but varying impacts on a child’s nutritional status based on his or her position in the conditional (quintile) nutrition distribution. For example, access to flush toilets improves the weight-for-height z-scores but is statistically significant only in the 20th, 40th and 50th quintiles. Children in the top quintiles are healthy, and access to sanitation may contribute minimally to maintaining their health status. On the other hand, children in the other quintiles, especially in the 20th quintile, are malnourished for a wide variety of reasons, and therefore access to flush toilets in addition to a broader set of conditions is required to improve nutritional status first, and then maintain adequate nutrition. Under these circumstances, access to flush toilets has negligible impacts on weight-for-height z-scores in higher quintiles. I confirm that the incidence of diarrhea has an inverse and differential effect on a child’s nutrition status. Additionally, I do the analysis for urban and rural sub-samples separately to check for “location” effects. There is evidence to suggest that the place where a child lives can significantly influence his or her health status. This analysis shows that the distributional impact of various health interventions may better inform policymakers to target policies based on a) the conditional distribution of the outcome variable rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, and b) the geographical location.  You can download the full paper in pdf format here.  "Got Water? Social Divisions and Access to Public Goods in Rural India" (with Santanu Chatterjee and David B. Mustard) We examine whether different social divisions help explain the variation in tap water access across India. Using data for 436 rural districts from the 2001 Census of India, we find that communities that are heterogeneous in terms of Hindu caste have less access to tap water than correspondingly homogeneous communities. By contrast, religiously fragmented communities have more access to tap water than correspondingly homogeneous communities. Therefore, heterogeneity within and across religions may work in opposite directions for access to public goods. Consequently, the many studies that use aggregate measures of social fragmentation may obscure important information regarding the design of public policy related to public goods.  You can download the full paper in pdf format here.  "The Effect of Caste on Tap Water Access in Rural India: Underlying Mechanisms." The abstract will be made available shortly. 2) Other Research Projects: Gender, Maternal and Child Health "Female Autonomy, Maternal and Child Health Care: Are the Women and Children from the Poorest Households Particularly Disadvantaged" (with Ramaprasad Rajaram). This study investigates whether the influence of female autonomy on safe maternal and child healthcare differs across rich and poor households in India, using the National Family Health Survey data for 2005-06. Employing the proportional odds model, we find evidence that female autonomy is a significant determinant of safe maternal and child healthcare, and women from richer households have higher odds of seeking proper maternal and child healthcare. We use both the wealth and the standard of living indexes to measure household’s economic status and find that the results do not vary based on the alternative measures. On the other hand, when the households are categorized into different wealth and standard of living quintiles, we do not find evidence of any systematic patterns of relationship between autonomy variables and healthcare seeking behavior. However, we find that female education is a significant determinant of safe maternal and child healthcare, regardless of the economic status of the household.