I examine how short-run changes in groundwater availability affect women’s marriage outcomes in rural India. Using a novel district–year panel that follows young women from ages 12 to 24 until marriage, I link fluctuations in local and destination-district water conditions to marriage timing. Because women bear primary responsibility for household water collection, groundwater shocks alter the value of their labor. I find that declines in groundwater levels delay marriage, consistent with families retaining women’s labor under water stress. The results, robust to household, district, year, and age fixed effects as well as controls for destination-district conditions, highlight an overlooked channel through which environmental variability shapes marriage markets and dowry transfers.

This paper examines how access to credit influences marriage outcomes in rural India, where dowry payments are prevalent. Exploiting a large policy-driven expansion of rural bank branches and an instrumental variables strategy, I show that increased access to formal credit raises the probability of marriage for daughters but not for sons. The effects are strongest in years without positive agricultural shocks, consistent with credit easing liquidity constraints and enabling dowry payments. Bank expansion also leads to higher dowry transfers and longer-distance marriage migration. While credit access raises school enrollment for younger girls, it has no effect on older girls at greater risk of marriage and reduces women’s participation in wage labor. Together, the findings suggest that financial inclusion policies, while designed to expand opportunities, can unintentionally accelerate marriage and reinforce dowry practices.

This paper studies how perceived neighborhood safety shapes school persistence in Delhi’s government schools. I combine administrative enrollment records with Safetipin perception audit data, which measure local safety based on lighting, visibility, and risk of harassment. To identify causal effects, I exploit the staggered rollout of metro stations, which significantly improves nearby safety scores. The results show that improvements in perceived safety reduce dropout, with the effects concentrated among girls. In contrast, deteriorations in safety perceptions disproportionately increase dropout for girls relative to boys. These effects are strongest at ages when independent commuting begins, highlighting how safety concerns directly constrain girls’ schooling. The findings emphasize the importance of improving neighborhood safety to sustain girls’ enrollment and reduce gender gaps in urban education.