This article documents the level of access to infrastructure and assesses its perceived impacts on human wellbeing in rural Nepal. It found more varied level of wellbeing in less remote communities and the perceived impacts of access to infrastructure on human wellbeing is higher in more remote areas. Notably, access to road received the highest priority among respondent followed by drinking water and irrigation. The methodology and findings of this study have practical implication for rural development in hills and mountains where human settlements are highly dispersed and access is the key to human wellbeing.

The preference for a son at birth is one of the key issues of demographic studies conducted in less developed countries; however, there is a rare exploration of child's sex preference among women in Nepal. This paper estimates the likelihood of a preference for son or daughter using the 2011 Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (NDHS) data, which contains a nationally representative sample of Nepalese women. A multinomial logistic regression analysis shows that son and daughter preferences widely vary across ethnicities, educational and economic status, and geographical region. Regarding ethnic origin, women from the Janajati (the largest ethnic minority group that consists of many sub-ethnic groups) prefer daughter more than the top two caste groups, the Brahman and Chhetri, whereas the Madhesi, Muslim, and other ethnic minority women prefer son more than the top two caste groups. Similarly, less educated, poorer, and rural women prefer son more than more educated, richer, urban women in general. Women who desire more of either sex end up with more children in their household.

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How do natural disasters affect academic performance? Despite numerous studies having been conducted after the 2015 Nepal earthquake, the academic impacts of this tragic event have rarely been explored. Applying the OLS estimation on the microdata collected through a questionnaire survey among 189 secondary school students of two secondary schools in one of the hardest-hit rural villages, we found that students’ average annual test scores dropped by 7% after the earthquake. Human losses measured by the incidence of death or injury and economic losses proxied by the level of house damage in a respondent’s family were found to be significant in the decline in the annual test scores of the respondents. Because secondary schools are usually not very close for most of the students in rural mountainous communities, we controlled for time taken to reach school, which was also found to significantly increase the magnitude of the drop in the test score. However, students’ level of happiness measured using the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) and the mother’s level of education were found to be significant in reducing the magnitude of the drop in the test score of students. The findings suggest more support is needed for students who faced higher levels of human and economic loss in their family.

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