Mita Shah
Biographic Data
| ID | 219204 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mita Shah |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mita |
| FAMILY NAME | Shah |
| SIGNATURE | SHAH M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Los Angeles |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1514-3931 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 174 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 19 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Sex, Power, and Adolescence
Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa face high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV). This paper evaluates the impact of offering adolescent females a goal-setting inter- vention to improve sexual and reproductive health and offering their male partners a soccer-based intervention, which educates and inspires young men to make better sexual and reproductive health choices. Both interventions significantly reduce female reports of IPV. The soccer …
Reducing Bias Among Health Care Providers
Bias among health care providers can lead to poor-quality care and poor health outcomes, and it can exacerbate disparities. We use a randomised controlled trial to evaluate an intervention to reduce family planning provider bias towards young women in 227 clinics in Tanzania, Burkina Faso and Pakistan. The intervention educated providers about bias towards young women, facilitated communication about bias with other providers and offered non-fina…
Disruptions to early childhood preschool services during a pandemic
Much less is known about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of early childhood preschool services relative to research on school closures. We conducted surveys of more than 5000 early childhood service providers and leverage temporal and spatial variation in India’s intensity of lockdowns to quantify disruptions to preschool services under the world’s largest early childhood development program between areas with different stri…
Contraceptive Care Visit Objectives and Outcomes
Globally, care experiences of the growing population of contraceptive users are not well‐understood. We leverage a large client dataset ( n = 71,602) from three countries (Burkina Faso, Pakistan, and Tanzania) to characterize contraceptive services sought (visit objective and method preference), assess whether these visit objectives were met and for whom, and explore if visit objective fulfillment was associated with care quality. Most people in …
Characterizing provider bias in contraceptive care in Tanzania and Burkina Faso
Unintended consequences of lockdowns, Covid-19 and the Shadow Pandemic in India
Aggregate Effects from Public Works
This paper explores the aggregate economic effects from India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which provides up to 100 days of labor to rural laborers at the mandated minimum wage. We examine the within-district change to nighttime lights, a proxy for economic development, and banking deposits using the staggered program rollout for identification. We find consistent and robust evidence that NREGS increased aggregate economi…
The dirty business of eliminating open defecation
We examine the impacts of a sanitation program designed to eliminate open defecation in at-scale randomized field experiments in four countries: India, Indonesia, Mali, and Tanzania. The programs - all variants of the widely-used Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach - increase village private sanitation coverage in all four locations by 7-39 percentage points. We use the experimentally-induced variation in access to sanitation to identi…
Women’s well-being during a pandemic and its containment
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the dual crises of disease and the containment policies designed to mitigate it. Yet, there is little evidence on the impacts of these policies on women in lower-income countries, where there may be limited social safety nets to absorb these shocks. We conduct a large phone survey and leverage India's geographically varied containment policies to estimate the association between the pandemic and containment policies …
Measuring Family Planning Provider Bias
The unmet need for modern contraception remains high around the world, particularly for youth. While some of this unmet need is driven by limited health infrastructure and method mix availability, many adolescents who visit family planning providers still do not receive methods that fit their needs. This suggests that providers may be biased against youth and that interventions to change provider behavior could help close this gap. However, it is…
Scaling up sanitation
We investigate the impacts of a widely used sanitation intervention, Community-Led Total Sanitation, which was implemented at scale across rural areas of Indonesia with a randomized controlled trial to evaluate its effectiveness. The program resulted in modest increases in toilet construction, decreased community tolerance of open defecation and reduced roundworm infestations in children. However, there was no impact on anemia, height or weight. …
Drought of Opportunities
Higher wages are generally thought to increase human capital production, particularly in the developing world. We introduce a simple model of human capital production in which investments and time allocation differ by age. Using data on test scores and schooling from rural India, we show that higher wages increase human capital investment in early life (in utero to age 2) but decrease human capital from age 5 to 16. Children switch out of school …
Risk-Taking Behavior in the Wake of Natural Disasters
We investigate whether experiencing a natural disaster affects risk-taking behavior. We conduct standard risk games (using real money) with randomly selected individuals in rural Indonesia. We find that individuals who recently suffered a flood or earthquake exhibit more risk aversion. Experiencing a natural disaster causes people to perceive that they now face a greater risk of a future disaster. We conclude that this change in perception of bac…
Can Mistargeting Destroy Social Capital and Stimulate Crime? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Program in Indonesia
Cash transfer programs can provide important financial support for poor households in developing countries and are becoming increasingly common. However the potential for mistargeting of program funds is high. This article focuses on the social consequences arising from misallocation of resources in close-knit communities. We find that the mistargeting of a cash transfer program in Indonesia had significant negative social consequences. The preva…
Intrahousehold Resource Allocation
Do parents invest more or less in their high-ability children? We provide new evidence on this question by comparing observed ability differences and observed investment differences between siblings living in the United States. To overcome endogeneity issues, we use sibling differences in handedness as an instrument for cognitive ability differences. We find that parents invest more in high-ability children, with a 1 standard deviation increase i…
Nature’s experiment? Handedness and early childhood development
In recent years, a large body of research has investigated the various factors affecting child development and the consequent impact of child development on future educational and labor market outcomes. In this article, we contribute to this literature by investigating the effect of handedness on child development. This is an important issue given that around 10% of the world’s population is left-handed and given recent research demonstrating tha…
Making Sex Work
Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalized Prostitution, by Mary Lucille Sullivan. North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Spinifex, 2007. 235 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1876756604 (hbk.). US$18.95. M
Risky Business
While condoms are an effective defense against the transmission of HIV, large numbers of sex workers are not using them. We argue that some sex workers are willing to take the risk because clients are willing to pay more to avoid using condoms. Using data from Mexico, we estimate that sex workers received a 23 percent premium for unprotected sex. The premium represents a value of one life year of between $14,760 and $51,832 or one to five times a…
Imagined multiple worlds
Our primary goal is to capture glimpses of “the imagined ... multiple worlds” of young adult women in post‐modern ethnic families, households and society. Drawing on a dialogical model of acculturation and diasporic identity, we show how young South Asian women in Britain use multiple identities across a variety of cultural settings to negotiate and navigate cultural and consumer behavioural borders. Using an ethno‐consumerist framework for our r…
Drought of Opportunities
Higher wages are generally thought to increase human capital production, particularly in the developing world. We introduce a simple model of human capital production in which investments and time allocation differ by age. Using data on test scores and schooling from rural India, we show that higher wages increase human capital investment in early life (in utero to age 2) but decrease human capital from age 5 to 16. Children switch out of school …
Risky Business
While condoms are an effective defense against the transmission of HIV, large numbers of sex workers are not using them. We argue that some sex workers are willing to take the risk because clients are willing to pay more to avoid using condoms. Using data from Mexico, we estimate that sex workers received a 23 percent premium for unprotected sex. The premium represents a value of one life year of between $14,760 and $51,832 or one to five times a…
Imagined multiple worlds
Our primary goal is to capture glimpses of “the imagined ... multiple worlds” of young adult women in post‐modern ethnic families, households and society. Drawing on a dialogical model of acculturation and diasporic identity, we show how young South Asian women in Britain use multiple identities across a variety of cultural settings to negotiate and navigate cultural and consumer behavioural borders. Using an ethno‐consumerist framework for our r…
Scaling up sanitation
We investigate the impacts of a widely used sanitation intervention, Community-Led Total Sanitation, which was implemented at scale across rural areas of Indonesia with a randomized controlled trial to evaluate its effectiveness. The program resulted in modest increases in toilet construction, decreased community tolerance of open defecation and reduced roundworm infestations in children. However, there was no impact on anemia, height or weight. …
Intrahousehold Resource Allocation
Do parents invest more or less in their high-ability children? We provide new evidence on this question by comparing observed ability differences and observed investment differences between siblings living in the United States. To overcome endogeneity issues, we use sibling differences in handedness as an instrument for cognitive ability differences. We find that parents invest more in high-ability children, with a 1 standard deviation increase i…
Women’s well-being during a pandemic and its containment
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the dual crises of disease and the containment policies designed to mitigate it. Yet, there is little evidence on the impacts of these policies on women in lower-income countries, where there may be limited social safety nets to absorb these shocks. We conduct a large phone survey and leverage India's geographically varied containment policies to estimate the association between the pandemic and containment policies …
Can Mistargeting Destroy Social Capital and Stimulate Crime? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Program in Indonesia
Cash transfer programs can provide important financial support for poor households in developing countries and are becoming increasingly common. However the potential for mistargeting of program funds is high. This article focuses on the social consequences arising from misallocation of resources in close-knit communities. We find that the mistargeting of a cash transfer program in Indonesia had significant negative social consequences. The preva…
Measuring Family Planning Provider Bias
The unmet need for modern contraception remains high around the world, particularly for youth. While some of this unmet need is driven by limited health infrastructure and method mix availability, many adolescents who visit family planning providers still do not receive methods that fit their needs. This suggests that providers may be biased against youth and that interventions to change provider behavior could help close this gap. However, it is…
Unintended consequences of lockdowns, Covid-19 and the Shadow Pandemic in India
The dirty business of eliminating open defecation
We examine the impacts of a sanitation program designed to eliminate open defecation in at-scale randomized field experiments in four countries: India, Indonesia, Mali, and Tanzania. The programs - all variants of the widely-used Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach - increase village private sanitation coverage in all four locations by 7-39 percentage points. We use the experimentally-induced variation in access to sanitation to identi…
Characterizing provider bias in contraceptive care in Tanzania and Burkina Faso
Nature’s experiment? Handedness and early childhood development
In recent years, a large body of research has investigated the various factors affecting child development and the consequent impact of child development on future educational and labor market outcomes. In this article, we contribute to this literature by investigating the effect of handedness on child development. This is an important issue given that around 10% of the world’s population is left-handed and given recent research demonstrating tha…
Making Sex Work
Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalized Prostitution, by Mary Lucille Sullivan. North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Spinifex, 2007. 235 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1876756604 (hbk.). US$18.95. M
Imagined multiple worlds
Our primary goal is to capture glimpses of “the imagined ... multiple worlds” of young adult women in post‐modern ethnic families, households and society. Drawing on a dialogical model of acculturation and diasporic identity, we show how young South Asian women in Britain use multiple identities across a variety of cultural settings to negotiate and navigate cultural and consumer behavioural borders. Using an ethno‐consumerist framework for our r…
Risky Business
While condoms are an effective defense against the transmission of HIV, large numbers of sex workers are not using them. We argue that some sex workers are willing to take the risk because clients are willing to pay more to avoid using condoms. Using data from Mexico, we estimate that sex workers received a 23 percent premium for unprotected sex. The premium represents a value of one life year of between $14,760 and $51,832 or one to five times a…
Making Sex Work
Making Sex Work: A Failed Experiment with Legalized Prostitution, by Mary Lucille Sullivan. North Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Spinifex, 2007. 235 pp. ISBN-13: 978-1876756604 (hbk.). US$18.95. M
Nature’s experiment? Handedness and early childhood development
In recent years, a large body of research has investigated the various factors affecting child development and the consequent impact of child development on future educational and labor market outcomes. In this article, we contribute to this literature by investigating the effect of handedness on child development. This is an important issue given that around 10% of the world’s population is left-handed and given recent research demonstrating tha…
Intrahousehold Resource Allocation
Do parents invest more or less in their high-ability children? We provide new evidence on this question by comparing observed ability differences and observed investment differences between siblings living in the United States. To overcome endogeneity issues, we use sibling differences in handedness as an instrument for cognitive ability differences. We find that parents invest more in high-ability children, with a 1 standard deviation increase i…
Can Mistargeting Destroy Social Capital and Stimulate Crime? Evidence from a Cash Transfer Program in Indonesia
Cash transfer programs can provide important financial support for poor households in developing countries and are becoming increasingly common. However the potential for mistargeting of program funds is high. This article focuses on the social consequences arising from misallocation of resources in close-knit communities. We find that the mistargeting of a cash transfer program in Indonesia had significant negative social consequences. The preva…
Risk-Taking Behavior in the Wake of Natural Disasters
We investigate whether experiencing a natural disaster affects risk-taking behavior. We conduct standard risk games (using real money) with randomly selected individuals in rural Indonesia. We find that individuals who recently suffered a flood or earthquake exhibit more risk aversion. Experiencing a natural disaster causes people to perceive that they now face a greater risk of a future disaster. We conclude that this change in perception of bac…
Drought of Opportunities
Higher wages are generally thought to increase human capital production, particularly in the developing world. We introduce a simple model of human capital production in which investments and time allocation differ by age. Using data on test scores and schooling from rural India, we show that higher wages increase human capital investment in early life (in utero to age 2) but decrease human capital from age 5 to 16. Children switch out of school …
Scaling up sanitation
We investigate the impacts of a widely used sanitation intervention, Community-Led Total Sanitation, which was implemented at scale across rural areas of Indonesia with a randomized controlled trial to evaluate its effectiveness. The program resulted in modest increases in toilet construction, decreased community tolerance of open defecation and reduced roundworm infestations in children. However, there was no impact on anemia, height or weight. …
Measuring Family Planning Provider Bias
The unmet need for modern contraception remains high around the world, particularly for youth. While some of this unmet need is driven by limited health infrastructure and method mix availability, many adolescents who visit family planning providers still do not receive methods that fit their needs. This suggests that providers may be biased against youth and that interventions to change provider behavior could help close this gap. However, it is…
Aggregate Effects from Public Works
This paper explores the aggregate economic effects from India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which provides up to 100 days of labor to rural laborers at the mandated minimum wage. We examine the within-district change to nighttime lights, a proxy for economic development, and banking deposits using the staggered program rollout for identification. We find consistent and robust evidence that NREGS increased aggregate economi…
The dirty business of eliminating open defecation
We examine the impacts of a sanitation program designed to eliminate open defecation in at-scale randomized field experiments in four countries: India, Indonesia, Mali, and Tanzania. The programs - all variants of the widely-used Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach - increase village private sanitation coverage in all four locations by 7-39 percentage points. We use the experimentally-induced variation in access to sanitation to identi…
Women’s well-being during a pandemic and its containment
The COVID-19 pandemic brought the dual crises of disease and the containment policies designed to mitigate it. Yet, there is little evidence on the impacts of these policies on women in lower-income countries, where there may be limited social safety nets to absorb these shocks. We conduct a large phone survey and leverage India's geographically varied containment policies to estimate the association between the pandemic and containment policies …
Unintended consequences of lockdowns, Covid-19 and the Shadow Pandemic in India
Disruptions to early childhood preschool services during a pandemic
Much less is known about the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the provision of early childhood preschool services relative to research on school closures. We conducted surveys of more than 5000 early childhood service providers and leverage temporal and spatial variation in India’s intensity of lockdowns to quantify disruptions to preschool services under the world’s largest early childhood development program between areas with different stri…
Contraceptive Care Visit Objectives and Outcomes
Globally, care experiences of the growing population of contraceptive users are not well‐understood. We leverage a large client dataset ( n = 71,602) from three countries (Burkina Faso, Pakistan, and Tanzania) to characterize contraceptive services sought (visit objective and method preference), assess whether these visit objectives were met and for whom, and explore if visit objective fulfillment was associated with care quality. Most people in …
Characterizing provider bias in contraceptive care in Tanzania and Burkina Faso
Sex, Power, and Adolescence
Adolescents in Sub-Saharan Africa face high rates of intimate partner violence (IPV). This paper evaluates the impact of offering adolescent females a goal-setting inter- vention to improve sexual and reproductive health and offering their male partners a soccer-based intervention, which educates and inspires young men to make better sexual and reproductive health choices. Both interventions significantly reduce female reports of IPV. The soccer …
Reducing Bias Among Health Care Providers
Bias among health care providers can lead to poor-quality care and poor health outcomes, and it can exacerbate disparities. We use a randomised controlled trial to evaluate an intervention to reduce family planning provider bias towards young women in 227 clinics in Tanzania, Burkina Faso and Pakistan. The intervention educated providers about bias towards young women, facilitated communication about bias with other providers and offered non-fina…
Economics (15 works) · Medicine (11 works) · Demographic economics (8 works) · Economic growth (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Environmental health (7 works) · Business (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Global Maternal and Child Health (6 works) · Political science (6 works)