Payal Hathi is a Ph.D. student in Demography at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests center on health and well-being in India, with a focus on social inequality, gender, sanitation, and the environment. Originally from southern California, Payal holds a B.A. in economics from UC Berkeley and an M.P.A. in Public Policy and Development Studies from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
Starting in 2016, we began Social Attitudes Research, India (SARI), a mobile phone survey collecting data from representative samples of adults in various states across India on people’s attitudes towards social issues such as reservations, intercaste and interreligious marriage, womenRead More..
Check out Nikhil’s article in EPW Engage in which he explores the government’s current pilot program (Mother’s Absolute Affection, or MAA) to improve breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is known to help children survive, providing vital nutrition and protection from disease. Nikhil arguesRead More..
The Hindu recently compiled its list of top ten non-fiction books of 2017, and Dean and Diane's Where India Goes made the list! They write: Coffey and Spears have come out with a deeply researched and thoughtfully written book aboutRead More..
We are excited that SARI findings on explicit prejudice, published in EPW last week, have received the following media coverage to date: Seema Chishti's front page article in the Indian Express - see here Scroll's coverage - see here NewsClick's interviewRead More..
Through the use of new survey data, the experiences and perceptions of discrimination among Dalits and Muslims have been quantified. One important result is that many respondents report experiencing discrimination at school and in interactions with government officials. These resultsRead More..
Intermarriage between races or castes is often used as a measure of average, population-level social tolerance. It is commonly assumed that increases in education will make a society more tolerant. General Social Survey (GSS) data between 1990 and 2016 showRead More..
A long literature in demography has debated the importance of place for health, especially children’s health. In this study, we assess whether the importance of dense settlement for infant mortality and child height is moderated by exposure to local sanitationRead More..
A paper by Payal, Dean, and Diane, published in Waterlines. Abstract: The world’s remaining open defecation is increasingly concentrated in rural India. The Indian government’s efforts to reduce open defecation by providing subsidies for latrine construction have been largely unsuccessfulRead More..