Anjali Adukia

About

Anjali Adukia is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the College. Her primary interests concern improving access to education in developing countries, particularly at the intersection of education and health. Her current work examines the impact of sanitation on education and health outcomes in rural Indian schools. Originally from Illinois, Anjali earned her master's and doctoral degrees from Harvard and her bachelor's from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in Molecular and Integrative Physiology. She has a background in non-profit management and higher education administration, having worked with organizations such as the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs. Her international interests include initiatives in India, where she started a city-wide service initiative in Ahmedabad and worked on tsunami rehabilitation in Tamil Nadu. Her past research includes examining transcriptional and growth factors in cancer and organ development, studying affirmative action, and consulting on post-Hurricane Katrina reconstruction efforts. She continues to work with NGOs like UNICEF and Manav Sadhna and aims to teach and research topics related to education and development economics, focusing on policies that influence education in developing contexts.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Economics
• Business
• Economic growth
• Sociology
• Visual arts
• Economic geography
• Gender studies
• Law
• Demography

Selected publications

• Economic and social development along the urban–rural continuum: New opportunities to inform policy

  World Development · 2022 · 175 citations

  The economic and social development of nations relies on their population having physical access to services and employment opportunities. For the vast majority of the 3.4 billion people living in rural areas, this largely depends on their access to urban centers of different sizes. Similarly, urban centers depend on their rural hinterlands. Building on the literature on functional areas/territories and the rural–urban continuum as well as insights from central place theory, this review article…

  DOI

• Educational Investment Responses to Economic Opportunity: Evidence from Indian Road Construction

  American Economic Journal Applied Economics · 2020 · 134 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The rural poor in developing countries, once economically isolated, are increasingly being connected to outside markets. Whether these new connections crowd out or encourage educational investment is a central question. We examine the effects on educational choices of 115,000 new roads built under India’s flagship road construction program. We find that children stay in school longer and perform better on standardized exams. Heterogeneity in treatment effects supports a standard human capital in…

  DOI

• The Social Construction of Race during Reconstruction

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-02-01 · 8 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• From Retributive to Restorative: An Alternative Approach to Justice in Schools

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-09-01 · 8 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  School districts historically approached conflict-resolution from a zero-sum perspective: suspend students seen as disruptive and potentially harm them, or avoid suspensions and harm their classmates.Restorative practices (RP) --focused on reparation and shared ownership of disciplinary justice --are designed to avoid this trade-off by addressing undesirable behavior without imparting harm.This study examines Chicago Public Schools' adoption of RP.We identify decreased suspensions, improved scho…

  PublisherDOI

• Reparative Ripple Effects? Exploring the Impacts of Sibling Exposure to School-Based Restorative Justice

  AEA Papers and Proceedings · 2024-05-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This study leverages the rollout of restorative practices (RP) within Chicago Public Schools to investigate whether younger siblings in elementary school who are not directly exposed to RP are affected by their older siblings' RP exposure in high school. We find suggestive evidence that younger siblings' absent days decline in response to indirect RP exposure. In contrast, we do not find any evidence that indirect exposure affects perceived behavior or academic outcomes. Our analysis is intended…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Emileigh Harrison

  University of Chicago

  8 shared

• Hakizumwami Birali Runesha

  University of Chicago

  8 shared

• Marcella Alsan

  7 shared

• Teodora Szasz

  7 shared

• Jeremy D. Goldhaber‐Fiebert

  7 shared

• Kim Babiarz

  Stanford University

  6 shared

• Alex Eble

  6 shared

• Paul Novosad

  Dartmouth College

  5 shared

Labs

• Harris School of Public PolicyPI

Education

• B.S., Molecular and Integrative Physiology

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• M.A.

  Harvard University

• Ph.D.

  Harvard University

Awards & honors

• NIHCM Foundation Research Award (2018)

Similar researchers at University of Chicago

• Dan A. Blackh-55
• Christopher Blattmanh-30
• Christopher R. Berryh-25