Research

Official statistics on deaths from COVID undercount deaths due to lack of testing. In developed countries, death registries are used to estimate excess deaths due to COVID during the pandemic. However, few developing countries had complete death registries even before the pandemic and the pandemic further stressed administrative capacities. As a substitute, we estimate all-cause excess deaths in India using the member rosters of a large, representative household panel survey. We estimate roughly 4.2 million excess deaths during the pandemic through February 2022. We cannot demonstrate causality between COVID and deaths, but the timing and age structure of deaths is consistent with the COVID pandemic and excess deaths are positively correlated with reported infections. Finally, we find that excess deaths were higher among higher-income persons and were negatively associated with mobility.

Four rounds of serological surveys were conducted, spanning two COVID waves (October 2020 and April–May 2021), in Tamil Nadu (population 72 million). Each round included representative populations in each district of the state, totaling 20,000 persons per round. State-level seroprevalence was 31.5% in round 1, fell to 22.9% in round 2 consistent with waning antibodies, rose to 67.1% by round 3 reflecting the Delta-variant wave, and reached 93.1% by round 4 (December 2021–January 2022) with vaccinations accounting for 63% of the increase. The study documents substantial waning of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies at the population level.

Improving housing conditions in urban slums is a key challenge for all developing countries. Public programs to move slum dwellers into formal houses often require them to give up their existing house and make complementary financial investments to receive the benefits. These participation costs or "ordeals" make the incidence and impact of the program ambiguous. In this paper I study the incidence and impact of India's flagship house construction grant costing 2% of the annual budget. Despite the need for complementary investments, I show that the incidence of the program is progressive. This is driven by the self-selection into the program of those with worse houses. The grant has a significant causal impact on a house quality index, driven by a 60pp increase in probability of having a concrete roof.

Proximity to providers is essential for non-tradable services like health and education. However, the distribution of providers per capita is skewed towards cities with better amenities. Training the locals to become providers could be more effective than moving qualified providers to remote areas. In this paper we study the impact of opening a medical college in a district on the access to care, take-up of care, and in turn on health outcomes in the same district. A two-way fixed effects regression is used to study the 5x growth in medical colleges in India between 1980 and 2020. One additional batch of students graduating from a college in the district is associated with a 4.3pp increase in health facilities and health workers.

Vaccination is a critical tool, along with suppression and treatment, for controlling epidemics such as SARS-CoV-2. To maximize the impact of vaccination, doses should be allocated to the highest value targets, accounting for health and potential economic benefits. We examine what allocation strategy is optimal and how to translate that strategy into actionable procurement decisions in the context of India. We compare 3 different allocation strategies (oldest first, highest contact rate first, random order) across 4 outcomes (lives saved, life-years saved, value of statistical lives saved, value of statistical life-years saved). We make 3 methodological contributions using novel local seroprevalence data, consumption data, and social demand curves for vaccines.