Consequences of the Swachh Bharat Mission: Minor Height Gains and Major Survey Pains

CASI Seminar

in partnership with the South Asia Center, Center for Global Health & PDRI-DevLab

Sangita Vyas
Assistant Professor, Economics, Hunter College, CUNY
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science & Economics
133 South 36th Street, Suite 230
Philadelphia PA 19104-6215

About the Seminar:
Open defecation is an important contributor to disease burden and was exceedingly common in rural India. In 2014, the Government of India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission, which aimed to eliminate open defecation in India by October 2019. Nationally-representative survey data suggest the Swachh Bharat Mission contributed to a large decline in open defecation among rural households: from 55% in 2015-16 to 27% in 2019-21. Over the same period, the average rural child’s height, an important indicator of human capital, also increased by about one-fifth of a standard deviation. Using decomposition techniques that control for fixed differences across districts, and changes in other characteristics within districts, this seminar discusses how the reduction in open defecation statistically accounts for about one-fifth of the increase in child height during this period. This improvement is smaller than expected based on the height-sanitation relationship in earlier periods in India and in other countries. A weaker relationship in recent years is consistent with increased under-reporting of open defecation in response to survey questions. Respondents may have been fearful of reporting open defecation in the survey because coercive tactics were commonly used to compel rural households to build and use latrines. This research highlights the consequences of coercive policies for measurement of self-reported behaviors in surveys.

About the Speaker:
Sangita Vyas is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Hunter College, CUNY. As a development economist and demographer, her research focuses on population health, the environment, and social inequality in India. One area of her research focuses on quantifying social disadvantages in mortality in India, where mortality disparities are understudied due to incomplete vital statistics. Another area of research focuses on the causes and consequences of poor sanitation and poor air quality in India, and the impact of policies aimed at reducing these environmental risks. Sangita has lived and worked on and off in India since 2009, and is a research fellow at r.i.c.e., a non-profit research organization which aims to inform child health policy in India. She completed her Economics Ph.D. at the University of Texas at Austin, an MPA from Princeton University, and a BS in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

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The Nand & Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture Series is an endowed public program of the Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI). Launched in the 2007-08 academic year, and made possible through the generous support of the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, the series brings renowned India specialists to the Penn community and serves as a critical forum for analyzing and understanding the complex economic, political, social, and cultural changes that the world’s largest democracy is experiencing, as well as the challenges that lie ahead.
The Saluja Global Fellows Program has been made possible by the generous gift from Vishal Saluja ENG’89 W’89. CASI was excited to launch the program during the 2022–23 academic year, coinciding with the Center’s 30th Anniversary. This new program enables CASI to invite eminent leaders and rising experts on contemporary India preferably from the fields of media, culture, law, and contemporary history to be in residence for one to two weeks at CASI.