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Anjali Adukia

Assistant Professor, University of Chicago
Chapter Member: Chicagoland SSN
Areas of Expertise:

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About Anjali

Adukia's research focuses on understanding factors that motivate and shape behavior, preferences, attitudes, and educational decision-making, with a particular focus on early-life influences. Overarching themes in Adukia's writings include understanding how the provision of basic needs—such as safety, health, justice, and representation—can increase school participation and improve child outcomes in developing contexts. Adukia serves on the board of the Association for Education Finance and Policy and the editorial boards of Education Finance and Policy and Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness.

In the News

Research discussed by Lory Hough, in "Why Toilets Matter," Harvard Ed Magazine, Winter 2018.
Opinion: "Representation Matters: Exploring the Role of Gender and Race on Educational Outcomes," Anjali Adukia, Inside IES Research, February 11, 2021.
Opinion: "How Sanitation Facilities in Schools Can Improve Educational Outcomes," Anjali Adukia, Ideas for India, August 20, 2018.
Opinion: "Latrines and Learning," Anjali Adukia, Harris School of Public Policy, June 22, 2017.
Quoted by Don Troop in "Keep the Laptop, Give Back the Dissertation," The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 12, 2011.

Publications

"Educational Investment Responses to Economic Opportunity: Evidence from Indian Road Construction∗" (with Sam Asher and Paul Novosad). (2019).

Examines the impacts on educational choices of 115,000 new roads built under India’s flagship road construction program. Finds that children stay in school longer and perform better on standardized exams. Mentions treatment heterogeneity supports predictions of a standard human capital investment model: enrollment increases are largest where nearby labor markets offer the highest returns to education.

"Sanitation and Education" University of Chicago (2016).

Explores whether the absence of school-sanitation infrastructure impedes educational attainment, particularly among pubescent-age girls, using a national Indian school latrine-construction initiative and administrative school-level data. Mentions how school-latrine construction substantially increases enrollment of pubescent-age girls, though predominately when providing sex-specific latrines.

"Spillover Impacts on Education from Employment Guarantees," Becker Friedman Institute, February 28, 2020.

Impacts on Education from Employment Guarantees using large-scale administrative data and household survey data, I estimate precise spillover impacts on education that reject substantive declines in children’s education from the rollout of India’s employment-guarantee program (MGNREGA). Mentions these negative spillovers are inexpensive to counteract, and small compared to immediate effects of MGNREGA on rural employment and poverty alleviation.

"What We Teach About Race and Gender: Representation in Images and Text of Children’s Books," (with Alex Eble, Emileigh Harrison, Hakizumwami Birali Runesha, and Teodora Szasz), National Bureau of Economic Research, August 2021.
Introduces tools to convert images to data, along with established text analysis methods, to measure the representation of race, gender, and age in children’s books commonly found in US schools and homes over the last century. Provides a view into the "black box" of education through children’s books in US schools and homes, highlighting what has changed and what has endured.