Restrictive social norms and strategic constraints imposed by family members can limit women's access to and benefits from social networks, especially in patrilocal societies. We characterize young married women's social networks in rural India and analyze how inter‐generational power dynamics within the household affect their network formation. Using primary data from Uttar Pradesh, we show that co‐residence with the mother‐in‐law is negatively correlated with her daughter‐in‐law's mobility and ability to form social connections outside the household, especially those related to health, fertility, and family planning. Our findings suggest that the mother‐in‐law's restrictive behavior is potentially driven by the misalignment of fertility preferences between the mother‐in‐law and the daughter‐in‐law. The lack of peers outside the household lowers the daughter‐in‐law's likelihood of visiting a family planning clinic and of using modern contraception. We find suggestive evidence that this is because outside peers (a) positively influence daughter‐in‐law's beliefs about the social acceptability of family planning and (b) enable the daughter‐in‐law to overcome mobility constraints by accompanying her to health clinics.

Background Domestic violence is a major public health issue worldwide with detrimental consequences not only for its victims but also for the next generations. Despite an extensive literature documenting the persistent intergenerational transmission of domestic violence, few studies explore the mechanisms underlying this transmission. Methods We use data from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey implemented between 1984 and 2009 in the Philippines. These longitudinal data allow us to measure how much the association between witnessing parental violence during childhood and the experience of intimate partner violence in young adulthood is explained by different measures of human capital that occur up to young adulthood, including education and health outcomes, cognitive skills, and psychosocial traits. Results We find that these human capital measures explain 22 percent of the transmission of domestic violence. Our results indicate that depression at age 18 and cognitive ability at age 11 are the primary human capital channels. Conclusions Our findings suggest a potential role of interventions targeting these human capital investments in reducing the cycle of violence across generations, as such, it could expand the window of opportunity for effective interventions in developing countries.

Mothers-in-law, especially those in South Asia, can exert significant influence over women, often even more so than women's husbands or other household members. Using data from rural India, we first show that mothers-in-law are more likely than husbands to (i) disapprove of women's family planning use and (ii) want women to have more children, particularly sons, than women themselves want. Next, using a field experiment, we show that providing women with vouchers for subsidized family planning services not only enabled them to initiate discussions about family planning with their mothers-in-law but also increased their mothers-in-law's approval of family planning.

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The detrimental effects of natural disasters on human capital during childhood are well-documented. However, little is known about whether, and to what extent, these impacts can be mitigated in the long term. This study analyzes whether a school infrastructure program can mitigate the adverse effects of extreme weather shocks on long-term children's education and labor market outcomes. This article uses a triple difference model that exploits the geographic variation of super-typhoons combined with the age-cohort exposure to, and spatial variation of, a secondary school infrastructure program in the Philippines. This study finds that the school infrastructure program almost entirely mitigated the negative effect of typhoons on educational attainment. These differential effects of the program on education among typhoon-affected children are also associated with their higher likelihood of working in a high-skilled occupation, in the non-agricultural sector, and of migrating overseas.