Sonia Bhalotra
Biographic Data
| ID | 1089361 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sonia Bhalotra |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sonia |
| FAMILY NAME | Bhalotra |
| SIGNATURE | BHALOTRA S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8634-8822 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 127 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
US Presidential Party switches are mirrored in global maternal mortality
In this observational study, we provide estimates of the impact on the maternal mortality ratio of swings in US aid for family planning and reproductive health driven by changes in the implementation of the Mexico City Policy—first introduced as the US Policy on Population Assistance under the Reagan administration in 1984 and often referred to as the Global Gag Rule (GGR). The policy prohibits US foreign assistance for family planning to oversea…
Dynamic Impacts of Lockdown on Domestic Violence
We identify dynamic impacts on domestic violence (DV) of the staggered imposition and lifting of lockdown across Chile’s 346 municipalities. Lockdown increases DV helpline calls and shelter occupancy without increasing DV police reports. These results are consistent with lockdown raising incidence and creating barriers to reporting. Once lockdown is lifted, shelter occupancy falls and police reports surge, but helpline calls remain elevated in li…
Studying Changes in Intimate Partner Violence in Latin America
Purpose Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health problem in Latin America. However, understanding the scope and dynamics of IPV has been limited by reliance on administrative or cross-sectional data. This limitation became especially problematic during the COVID-19 pandemic, when mobility restrictions likely affected help-seeking and reporting. Drawing on a new panel database, this brief report examines changes in IPV during…
An examination of multiple illness and social related stressors during the Covid-19 pandemic on maternal and child mental health; findings from a birth cohort in rural Pakistan
These findings provide evidence of additional pathways through which prolonged global events, like the pandemic, can have multigenerational mental health impacts
Maternal self‐efficacy during infancy
Maternal self‐efficacy during infancy is shaped by many factors, including maternal mental health and social support. This study examines how depression, emotional support, and childcare support relate to maternal self‐efficacy among mothers of infants in rural Pakistan. Participants included 885 mothers assessed at 3 and 6 months postpartum. At 3 months postpartum, mothers completed interview measures of depression, emotional social support, sup…
Maternal Investments in Children
We investigate the importance of subjective expectations of returns to and effort costs of the two principal investments that mothers make in newborns: breastfeeding and stimulation. We find heterogeneity across mothers in rural Pakistan in expected effort costs and expected returns for outcomes in the cognitive, socio-emotional and health domains, and that this contributes to explaining heterogeneity in investments. We find no significant differ…
Leader Identity and Coordination
This paper examines policy effectiveness as a function of leader identity. We experimentally vary leader religious identity in a coordination game implemented in India and focus on citizen reactions to leader identity, controlling for leader actions. We find that minority leaders improve coordination, and majority leaders do not. Alternative treatment arms reveal that affirmative action for minorities reverses this result, while intergroup contac…
Effects of a maternal psychosocial intervention on hair derived biomarkers of HPA axis function in mothers and children in rural Pakistan
Disruptions in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are thought to be key neuroendocrine mechanisms involved in psychopathology and may have intergenerational impacts. Hair-derived HPA hormones offer a measure of long-term HPA axis activity that may be useful in assessing maternal and infant health. Building on a community-based randomized control trial of a perinatal depression intervention in Pakistan, we examine intervention effects o…
Infant Health, Cognitive Performance, and Earnings
We identify earnings impacts of exposure to an infant health intervention in Sweden, using individual-linked administrative data to trace potential mechanisms. Leveraging quasi-random variation in eligibility, we estimate that exposure was associated with higher test scores in primary school for boys and girls. However, only girls were more likely to score in the top quintile. Subsequent gains, in secondary schooling, employment, and earnings, ar…
On the Quantity and Quality of Girls
Access to prenatal sex-detection technology in India has led to a phenomenal increase in abortion of girls. We find that it has also narrowed the gender gap in under-five mortality, consistent with surviving girls being more wanted than aborted girls. For every three aborted girls, one additional girl survived to age five. Mechanisms include moderation of son-biased fertility stopping and narrowing of gender gaps in parental investments. However,…
Religion and abortion
Longitudinal effects of perinatal social support on maternal depression
BACKGROUND: Depression in the perinatal period, during pregnancy or within 1 year of childbirth, imposes a high burden on women with rippling effects through her and her child's life course. Social support may be an important protective factor, but the complex bidirectional relationship with depression, alongside a paucity of longitudinal explorations, leaves much unknown about critical windows of social support exposure across the perinatal peri…
Maternal Depression, Women’s Empowerment, and Parental Investment
We evaluate the medium-term impacts of treating maternal depression on women’s mental health, financial empowerment, and parenting decisions. We leverage variation induced by a cluster-randomized controlled trial that provided psychotherapy to 903 prenatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. It was one of the world’s largest psych otherapy interventions, and it dramatically reduced postpartum depression. Seven years after psychotherapy conclud…
Maternal depression in rural Pakistan
NCT02111915. Registered 18 September 2015. NCT02658994. Registered 22 January 2016. Both trials were prospectively registered
Twin Birth and Maternal Condition
Twin births are often construed as a natural experiment in the social and natural sciences on the premise that the occurrence of twins is quasi-random. We present population-level evidence that challenges this premise. Using individual data for 17 million births in 72 countries, we demonstrate that indicators of mother's health, health-related behaviors, and the prenatal environment are systematically positively associated with twin birth. The as…
Father involvement in the first year of life
Women's inheritance rights reform and the preference for sons in India
Pathbreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation
We investigate whether the event of a woman being competitively elected as a state legislator encourages the subsequent political participation of women, using a regression discontinuity design on constituency level data from India. We find that female incumbents are more likely than male incumbents to re-contest and that there is a decline in the entry of new women candidates. This decline is most pronounced in states with entrenched gender bias…
Socioeconomic status indicators and common mental disorders
There is growing interest in the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES), poverty, and mental health in low and middle-income countries (LMIC). However, it is not clear whether a gradient approach focused on a wider SES distribution or a binary poverty approach is more salient for mental health in LMIC. Yet this distinction has implications for interventions aimed at improving population health. We contribute to the literature by examinin…
The Price of Gold
Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries
This paper investigates the sensitivity of the intergenerational transmission of health to changes in the socioeconomic and public health environment into which children are born using individual survey data on 2.24 million children born to 600,000 mothers during the period 1970 to 2000 in 38 developing countries merged by country and cohort with macroeconomic data. We find that children are more likely to bear the penalty exerted by poor materna…
War and Stature
The Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 was precipitated by secession of the Igbo-dominated south-eastern region to create the state of Biafra. It was the first civil war in Africa, the predecessor of many. We investigate the legacies of this war four decades later. Using variation across ethnicity and cohort, we identify significant long-run impacts on human health capital. Individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhib…
Poverty and Survival
A recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival. But equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant. Using state-level panel data for India, we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival. We identify a significant within-state relationship whi…
Fatal fluctuations? Cyclicality in infant mortality in India
The linked survival prospects of siblings
This paper reports an analysis of micro-data for India that shows a high correlation in infant mortality among siblings. In 13 of 15 states, we identify a causal effect of infant death on the risk of infant death of the subsequent sibling (a scarring effect), after controlling for mother-level heterogeneity. The scarring effects are large, the only other covariate with a similarly large effect being mother's (secondary or higher) education. The t…
Pathbreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation
We investigate whether the event of a woman being competitively elected as a state legislator encourages the subsequent political participation of women, using a regression discontinuity design on constituency level data from India. We find that female incumbents are more likely than male incumbents to re-contest and that there is a decline in the entry of new women candidates. This decline is most pronounced in states with entrenched gender bias…
Fatal fluctuations? Cyclicality in infant mortality in India
Women's inheritance rights reform and the preference for sons in India
On the Quantity and Quality of Girls
Access to prenatal sex-detection technology in India has led to a phenomenal increase in abortion of girls. We find that it has also narrowed the gender gap in under-five mortality, consistent with surviving girls being more wanted than aborted girls. For every three aborted girls, one additional girl survived to age five. Mechanisms include moderation of son-biased fertility stopping and narrowing of gender gaps in parental investments. However,…
Father involvement in the first year of life
The Price of Gold
The linked survival prospects of siblings
This paper reports an analysis of micro-data for India that shows a high correlation in infant mortality among siblings. In 13 of 15 states, we identify a causal effect of infant death on the risk of infant death of the subsequent sibling (a scarring effect), after controlling for mother-level heterogeneity. The scarring effects are large, the only other covariate with a similarly large effect being mother's (secondary or higher) education. The t…
Religion and abortion
Longitudinal effects of perinatal social support on maternal depression
BACKGROUND: Depression in the perinatal period, during pregnancy or within 1 year of childbirth, imposes a high burden on women with rippling effects through her and her child's life course. Social support may be an important protective factor, but the complex bidirectional relationship with depression, alongside a paucity of longitudinal explorations, leaves much unknown about critical windows of social support exposure across the perinatal peri…
Changes in utilization and productivity in a deregulating economy
Child Farm Labor
This article is motivated by the remarkable observation that children of land-rich households are often more likely to be in work than the children of land-poor households. The vast majority of working children in developing economies are in agricultural work, predominantly on farms operated by their families. Land is the most important store of wealth in agrarian societies, and it is typically distributed very unequally. These facts challenge th…
The linked survival prospects of siblings
This paper reports an analysis of micro-data for India that shows a high correlation in infant mortality among siblings. In 13 of 15 states, we identify a causal effect of infant death on the risk of infant death of the subsequent sibling (a scarring effect), after controlling for mother-level heterogeneity. The scarring effects are large, the only other covariate with a similarly large effect being mother's (secondary or higher) education. The t…
Fatal fluctuations? Cyclicality in infant mortality in India
War and Stature
The Nigerian civil war of 1967-70 was precipitated by secession of the Igbo-dominated south-eastern region to create the state of Biafra. It was the first civil war in Africa, the predecessor of many. We investigate the legacies of this war four decades later. Using variation across ethnicity and cohort, we identify significant long-run impacts on human health capital. Individuals exposed to the war at all ages between birth and adolescence exhib…
Poverty and Survival
A recent literature highlights the uncertainty concerning whether economic growth has any causal protective effect on health and survival. But equal rates of growth often deliver unequal rates of poverty reduction and absolute deprivation is more clearly relevant. Using state-level panel data for India, we contribute the first estimates of the impact of changes in poverty on infant survival. We identify a significant within-state relationship whi…
Gradients of the Intergenerational Transmission of Health in Developing Countries
This paper investigates the sensitivity of the intergenerational transmission of health to changes in the socioeconomic and public health environment into which children are born using individual survey data on 2.24 million children born to 600,000 mothers during the period 1970 to 2000 in 38 developing countries merged by country and cohort with macroeconomic data. We find that children are more likely to bear the penalty exerted by poor materna…
The Price of Gold
Socioeconomic status indicators and common mental disorders
There is growing interest in the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES), poverty, and mental health in low and middle-income countries (LMIC). However, it is not clear whether a gradient approach focused on a wider SES distribution or a binary poverty approach is more salient for mental health in LMIC. Yet this distinction has implications for interventions aimed at improving population health. We contribute to the literature by examinin…
Women's inheritance rights reform and the preference for sons in India
Pathbreakers? Women's Electoral Success and Future Political Participation
We investigate whether the event of a woman being competitively elected as a state legislator encourages the subsequent political participation of women, using a regression discontinuity design on constituency level data from India. We find that female incumbents are more likely than male incumbents to re-contest and that there is a decline in the entry of new women candidates. This decline is most pronounced in states with entrenched gender bias…
Twin Birth and Maternal Condition
Twin births are often construed as a natural experiment in the social and natural sciences on the premise that the occurrence of twins is quasi-random. We present population-level evidence that challenges this premise. Using individual data for 17 million births in 72 countries, we demonstrate that indicators of mother's health, health-related behaviors, and the prenatal environment are systematically positively associated with twin birth. The as…
Father involvement in the first year of life
Maternal Depression, Women’s Empowerment, and Parental Investment
We evaluate the medium-term impacts of treating maternal depression on women’s mental health, financial empowerment, and parenting decisions. We leverage variation induced by a cluster-randomized controlled trial that provided psychotherapy to 903 prenatally depressed mothers in rural Pakistan. It was one of the world’s largest psych otherapy interventions, and it dramatically reduced postpartum depression. Seven years after psychotherapy conclud…
Maternal depression in rural Pakistan
NCT02111915. Registered 18 September 2015. NCT02658994. Registered 22 January 2016. Both trials were prospectively registered
Religion and abortion
Longitudinal effects of perinatal social support on maternal depression
BACKGROUND: Depression in the perinatal period, during pregnancy or within 1 year of childbirth, imposes a high burden on women with rippling effects through her and her child's life course. Social support may be an important protective factor, but the complex bidirectional relationship with depression, alongside a paucity of longitudinal explorations, leaves much unknown about critical windows of social support exposure across the perinatal peri…
Effects of a maternal psychosocial intervention on hair derived biomarkers of HPA axis function in mothers and children in rural Pakistan
Disruptions in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are thought to be key neuroendocrine mechanisms involved in psychopathology and may have intergenerational impacts. Hair-derived HPA hormones offer a measure of long-term HPA axis activity that may be useful in assessing maternal and infant health. Building on a community-based randomized control trial of a perinatal depression intervention in Pakistan, we examine intervention effects o…
Infant Health, Cognitive Performance, and Earnings
We identify earnings impacts of exposure to an infant health intervention in Sweden, using individual-linked administrative data to trace potential mechanisms. Leveraging quasi-random variation in eligibility, we estimate that exposure was associated with higher test scores in primary school for boys and girls. However, only girls were more likely to score in the top quintile. Subsequent gains, in secondary schooling, employment, and earnings, ar…
On the Quantity and Quality of Girls
Access to prenatal sex-detection technology in India has led to a phenomenal increase in abortion of girls. We find that it has also narrowed the gender gap in under-five mortality, consistent with surviving girls being more wanted than aborted girls. For every three aborted girls, one additional girl survived to age five. Mechanisms include moderation of son-biased fertility stopping and narrowing of gender gaps in parental investments. However,…
Leader Identity and Coordination
This paper examines policy effectiveness as a function of leader identity. We experimentally vary leader religious identity in a coordination game implemented in India and focus on citizen reactions to leader identity, controlling for leader actions. We find that minority leaders improve coordination, and majority leaders do not. Alternative treatment arms reveal that affirmative action for minorities reverses this result, while intergroup contac…
Maternal Investments in Children
We investigate the importance of subjective expectations of returns to and effort costs of the two principal investments that mothers make in newborns: breastfeeding and stimulation. We find heterogeneity across mothers in rural Pakistan in expected effort costs and expected returns for outcomes in the cognitive, socio-emotional and health domains, and that this contributes to explaining heterogeneity in investments. We find no significant differ…
An examination of multiple illness and social related stressors during the Covid-19 pandemic on maternal and child mental health; findings from a birth cohort in rural Pakistan
These findings provide evidence of additional pathways through which prolonged global events, like the pandemic, can have multigenerational mental health impacts
Maternal self‐efficacy during infancy
Maternal self‐efficacy during infancy is shaped by many factors, including maternal mental health and social support. This study examines how depression, emotional support, and childcare support relate to maternal self‐efficacy among mothers of infants in rural Pakistan. Participants included 885 mothers assessed at 3 and 6 months postpartum. At 3 months postpartum, mothers completed interview measures of depression, emotional social support, sup…
US Presidential Party switches are mirrored in global maternal mortality
In this observational study, we provide estimates of the impact on the maternal mortality ratio of swings in US aid for family planning and reproductive health driven by changes in the implementation of the Mexico City Policy—first introduced as the US Policy on Population Assistance under the Reagan administration in 1984 and often referred to as the Global Gag Rule (GGR). The policy prohibits US foreign assistance for family planning to oversea…
Economics (18 works) · Medicine (15 works) · Psychology (15 works) · Demography (12 works) · Demographic economics (10 works) · Population (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Pregnancy (9 works) · Developmental psychology (8 works) · Global Maternal and Child Health (8 works)