2023 Kuznets Prize awarded to Garima Rastogi and Anisha Sharma

Garima Rastogi

Anisha Sharma

Garima Rastogi (University of Oxford) and Anisha Sharma (Ashoka University) have received the 2023 Kuznets Prize for their article “Unwanted daughters: the unintended consequences of a ban on sex-selective abortions on the educational attainment of women,” which was published in the Journal of Population Economics (2022), 35, pp. 1473–1516. The annual prize honors the best article published in the Journal of Population Economics in the previous year.

Biographical abstracts

Garima Rastogi is a student in the MPhil in Economics program at the University of Oxford. She has completed her undergraduate education with honors from Ashoka University, India. Her research is primarily in applied microeconomics. She uses empirical methods to explore questions at the intersection of gender, education, and health, in the context of developing countries. She is currently working on her dissertation, which explores the role of a coercive sterilization policy in India on current family-planning practices.

Anisha Sharma is a development economist at Ashoka University, India. Her research interests are in labor economics, the economics of health and education, and public policy, with a particular interest in gender gaps across these dimensions. One strand of her research focuses how people make decisions about human capital investments and how gendered social norms influence their choices. Another strand of her research relates to the constraints on firms from hiring women, as well as the socioeconomic factors that constrain women’s labor supply. Dr. Sharma received a PhD in Economics from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.

Abstract of the winning paper

“We study whether legal restrictions on prenatal discrimination against females leads to a shift by parents towards postnatal discrimination, focusing on the impact on educational attainment. We exploit the differentially timed introduction of a ban on sex-selective abortions across states in India. We find that a legal restriction on abortions led to an increase in the number of females born, as well as a widening in the gender gap in educational attainment. Females born in states affected by the ban are 2.3, 3.5, and 3.2 percentage points less likely to complete grade 10, complete grade 12, and enter university, respectively, relative to males. These effects are concentrated among non-wealthy households that lacked the resources to evade the ban. Investigating mechanisms, we find that the relative reduction in investments in female education was not driven by family size but because surviving females became relatively unwanted, whereas surviving males became relatively more valued, leading to an increasing concentration of household resources on them. Discrimination is amplified among higher-order births and among females with relatively few sisters. Finally, these negative effects exist despite the existence of a marriage market channel through which parents increase investments in their daughters’ education to increase the probability that they make a high-quality match. This suggests that policymakers need to address the unintended welfare consequences of interventions aimed at promoting gender equity.”

About the Kuznets Prize

The Journal of Population Economics awards the “Kuznets Prize” for the best paper recently published in the Journal of Population Economics. Starting from 2014, the Prize has been awarded annually. Papers are judged by the Editors of the Journal.

Simon Kuznets, a pioneer in population economics, Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and the 1971 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, died on July 10, 1985. Professor Kuznets was born 1901 in Pinsk, Belarus, and came to the USA in 1922. He earned his Bachelor of Science in 1923, a Master of Arts degree in 1924, and his doctorate in 1926, all from Columbia University. During World War II, he was Associate Director of the Bureau of Planning and Statistics on the War Production Board, and he served on the staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research from 1927 to 1960. Mr. Kuznets was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania for 24 years and Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University from 1954 until he joined Harvard University in 1960. He retired in 1971 and was given the title of George F. Baker Professor Emeritus of Economics. He was a former president of the American Economic Association and the American Statistical Association.

Previous winners

The Kuznets Prize has previously been awarded to:

2022: Luca Bonacini (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia), Giovanni Gallo (Sapienza University of Rome), and Sergio Scicchitano (National Institute for Public Policies Analysis) for their article “Working from home and income inequality: risks of a ‘new normal’ with COVID-19,” Journal of Population Economics (2021), 34(1), pp. 303–360.

2021: Yun Qiu (Jinan University), Xi Chen (Yale University), and Wei Shi (Jinan University) for their article “Impacts of social and economic factors on the transmission of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in China,” Journal of Population Economics (2020), 33(4): pp. 1127–1172.

2020: Gautam Hazarika (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley), Chandan Kumar Jha (Le Moyne College, Madden School of Business), and Sudipta Sarangi (Virginia Tech) for their article “Ancestral ecological endowments and missing women,” Journal of Population Economics 32(4): pp. 1101–1123.

2019: Yoo-Mi Chin (Baylor University) and Nicholas Wilson (Reed College) for their article “Disease risk and fertility: evidence from the HIV/AIDS pandemic,” Journal of Population Economics 31(2): pp. 429–451.

2018: Chunbei Wang and Le Wang (University of Oklahoma) for their article “Knot yet: minimum marriage age law, marriage delay, and earnings,” Journal of Population Economics 30(3): pp. 771–804.

2017: Binnur Balkan (Stockholm School of Economics) and Semih Tumen (Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey) for their article “Immigration and prices: quasi-experimental evidence from Syrian refugees in Turkey,” Journal of Population Economics 29(3): pp. 657–686.

2016: Loren Brandt (University of Toronto), Aloysius Siow (University of Toronto), and Hui Wang (Peking University) for their article “Compensating for unequal parental investments in schooling,” Journal of Population Economics 28: 423–462.

2015: Haoming Liu (National University of Singapore) for his article “The quality–quantity trade-off: evidence from the relaxation of China’s one-child policy,” Journal of Population Economics 27: 565–602.

2014: Paolo Masella (University of Essex) for his article “National identity and ethnic diversity,” Journal of Population Economics 26: 437–454.

Period 2010–2012: Richard W. Evans (Brigham Young University), Yingyao Hu (Johns Hopkins University), and Zhong Zhao (Renmin University) for their article “The fertility effect of catastrophe: US hurricane births,” Journal of Population Economics 23: 1–36.

Period 2007–2009: Makoto Hirazawa (Nagoya University) and Akira Yakita (Nagoya University) for their article “Fertility, child care outside the home, and pay-as-you-go social security,” Journal of Population Economics 22: 565–583.

Period 2004–2006: Jinyoung Kim (Korea University) received the Kuznets Prize for his article “Sex selection and fertility in a dynamic model of conception and abortion,” Journal of Population Economics 18: 041–067.

Period 2001–2003: Olympia Bover (Bank of Spain) and Manuel Arellano (CEMFI) for their article “Learning about migration decisions from the migrants: using complementary datasets to model intra-regional migrations in Spain,” Journal of Population Economics 15:357–380.

Period 1998–2000: David C. Ribar (The George Washington University) for his article “The socioeconomic consequences of young women’s childbearing: reconciling disparate evidence,” Journal of Population Economics 12: 547–565.

Period 1995–1997: James R. Walker (University of Wisconsin-Madison) for his article “The effect of public policies on recent Swedish fertility behavior,” Journal of Population Economics, 8: 223–251.