<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This is a short paper analyzing the potential effects of a targeted school-building program on health indicators. The Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) program in India intended to build residential schools for girls from historically disadvantaged sections of the society, providing a unique multifaceted policy setting with tenets of gender equality, affirmative action, and infrastructure reform in education. Exploiting the potentially exogenous cross-sectional variations generated by the institutional features of implementation of this intervention, I run triple-difference regressions to find that the program led to increases in body mass index (BMI) among the underweight. There seems to be a positive correlation between KGBV exposure and probability of being in the “healthy” band of BMI indicators.</p></abstract>

This is a short paper analyzing the potential effects of a targeted school-building program on health indicators. The Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV) program in India intended to build residential schools for girls from historically disadvantaged sections of the society, providing a unique multifaceted policy setting with tenets of gender equality, affirmative action, and infrastructure reform in education. Exploiting the potentially exogenous cross-sectional variations generated by the institutional features of implementation of this intervention, I run triple-difference regressions to find that the program led to increases in body mass index (BMI) among the underweight. There seems to be a positive correlation between KGBV exposure and probability of being in the “healthy” band of BMI indicators.

From better schools to better nourishment: evidence from a school-building program in India

IZA Journal of Labor Policy

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This is a short paper analyzing the potential effects of a targeted school-building program on health indicators. The Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV)...

	Body mass index (if BMI < 18.5)
	Females	Disadvantaged castes

	(1)	(2)
affected*disadvantaged	0.1984***
	(0.0716)
girl*affected		0.3916***
		(0.0427)
R²	0.47	0.44
Observations	17,177	25,799
Mean of dependent variable	15.56	15.41

Age in data set	6–10 years	11 12 13 14	15 16 17 18 19 20 21	22 and above
Age in policy year	0–3 years	4 5 6 7	8 9 10 11 12 13 14	15 and above
Exposure to policy	Not yet exposed	Currently exposed	Previously exposed	Never exposed

	KGBV	Non-KGBV	Δ

	(1)	(2)	(1)–(2)
Healthy BMI	0.3088	0.2311	0.0777
Standard deviation	0.0034	0.0015	H₀: Δ = 0
			p-value < 0.001

	KGBV grants received	No KGBV grants received	Δ
	(1)	(2)	(1)–(2)
Mean BMI (women aged 15–49 years)	20.283	20.987	–0.704
Standard deviation	0.334	0.204	H₀: Δ = 0
			p-value = 0.12

	Extensive margin	Body mass index (if BMI < 18.5)
	BMI < 18.5	KGBV effect	Falsification

	(1)	(2)	(3)
KGBV	–0.0043	0.1901**	0.0742
	(0.0125)	(0.0922)	(0.1902)
R²	0.33	0.41	0.45
Observations	90,988	33,406	16,756
Mean of dependent variable	0.37	15.43	15.10

From better schools to better nourishment: evidence from a school-building program in India

Published Online: Mar 24, 2020

Page range: -

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/izajolp-2020-0002

Keywords
health, education for girls, BMI, affirmative action

© 2020 Somdeep Chatterjee, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Cohort convergences: difference-in-differences

Summary of identification strategy

Probability of being in the healthy BMI zone

Comparison of states by mean BMI based on KGBV penetration

Effects of KGBV on health status: triple-difference methodology

Robustness check: restrictive subsamples

Summary statistics

	Body mass index
	Age < 30	Age < 25	Age < 22
	(1)	(2)	(3)
KGBV	0.1901**	0.1832*	0.2131**
	(0.0922)	(0.0951)	(0.0985)
R²	0.41	0.41	0.39
Observations	33,406	30,723	29,389

	Mean	Standard deviation

	(1)	(2)
BMI	18.79	13.22
BMI (if underweight)	15.43	1.94
Age 11–22 years (=1, if yes)	0.51	0.49
SC/ST (=1, if yes)	0.74	0.44
Female (=1, if yes)	0.49	0.49
Age (in years)	17.68	7.08
Education (among males; highest number of years)	7.97	4.90
Education (among females; highest number of years)	5.66	5.21

From better schools to better nourishment: evidence from a school-building program in India

Published Online: Mar 24, 2020

Page range: -

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/izajolp-2020-0002

Keywordshealth, education for girls, BMI, affirmative action

© 2020 Somdeep Chatterjee, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Cohort convergences: difference-in-differences

Summary of identification strategy

Probability of being in the healthy BMI zone

Comparison of states by mean BMI based on KGBV penetration

Effects of KGBV on health status: triple-difference methodology

Robustness check: restrictive subsamples

Summary statistics

Keywords
health, education for girls, BMI, affirmative action