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This paper studies educational aspirations and grade achievements of teenagers in India, using Structural Equation Modelling with data from the Young Lives Study. The analysis differentiates direct effects of relevant socio-economic and individual characteristics on educational output from indirect effects through aspirations. In this sample, some student characteristics – parents' education, mothers' caste and the student's gender – have no direct effect on educational output, but an indirect effect on educational aspirations going through abilities. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and in particular girls, are at a disadvantage at age 12 because they have accumulated lower cognitive abilities. Abilities shape aspirations, which then impact educational output beyond the mere effect of abilities. Girls are at a double disadvantage: besides lower average skills at age 12, they developed lower aspirations than boys of the same characteristics. The economic situation of the household was neither directly nor indirectly related with students' achievements in school. These results help distinguish aspirations as drivers of behaviour from aspirations as correlates of other characteristics, and they have relevant policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major learning about the social and economic losses that an external shock to the system can cause. In this paper, we examine some sustainability issues focusing on three key focal points of sustainable development – economic growth, poverty and inequality in the context of climate change. We focus on the inter-relationship between economic growth, investment, labour force participation, energy consumption, poverty and inequality under alternative scenarios using the global framing of Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). An econometric model is used for estimating the relationship between GDP and its determinants along with fitting a General Quadratic and/or Beta Lorenz curve using the World Bank's Povcal software for determining the relationship between income, poverty and inequality. Alternative GDP growth paths, redistribution assumptions and poverty lines are used for simulations which reveal the extent of sensitivity of the developmental targets to scenarios up to 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among countries with comparable levels of income, India has one of the more progressive disability policy frameworks. However, people with disabilities in India are still subject to multiple disadvantages. This paper focuses on state-level variations in outcomes for people with disabilities to provide an explanation for the contrast between the liberal laws on paper and the challenges faced by people with disabilities in practice. Using average monthly per-capita expenditure as an indicator of economic well-being, instrumental-variable Wald estimator results indicate that households with members with disabilities have expenditures that are 14% lower compared with households with able members. This effect is most pronounced among families with male adults and children with disabilities, and in states that are relatively poor, relatively more urban, those that experience extremes in annual rainfall and temperature, and those that have low to medium levels of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to explore the linkage between poverty and inequality in malnutrition through decomposition analysis using data from the National Family Health Survey-3 (NFHS-3) conducted in 2005-2006. Association between inequality in malnutrition and income inequality and poverty is observed at the state level. Inequality is analysed using the concentration index, which is further decomposed to identify the factors associated with inequality in malnutrition. Poverty, in terms of the wealth index, has considerable impact on average rates of malnutrition, indicating a disproportional burden of malnutrition on the poor. At the macro-economic level, overall socio-economic inequality correlates moderately with the inequality in malnutrition. On decomposition, poverty alone explains more than half of the inequality in malnutrition, which justifies the poverty-nutrition inequality linkage. The paper highlights the influence of poverty in worsening malnutrition, leading to unequal nutritional outcomes among children in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]