Speaker
Description
Social identity-based prejudice has a debilitating effect on various life outcomes. While the social science literature primarily focuses on the economic and social consequences, the mental health effects of such biases are vastly under-studied. We investigate this question in the context of caste discrimination in Bihar, India, using a large-scale, detailed, representative survey of public schools. Our analysis shows that a backward caste student has 0.42sigma higher depression score and is 19 percentage points more likely to be categorized as `depressed', relative to a forward caste student, when taught by a forward caste teacher. To understand the source of the effect on mental health, we show that forward caste teachers systematically underestimate the learning levels of backward caste students relative to forward caste ones. This constitutes an objective measure of teachers' caste-based prejudice. Further, backward caste students also exhibit considerably lower levels of educational aspirations relative to their forward caste counterparts. Our estimates suggest that about 7.7m students suffer from depression in Bihar, and out of that 6.7m are from backward castes. A significant proportion of such cases arise because of teachers’ caste prejudice.
