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Social connections are fundamental to human wellbeing. This paper examines the social networks of young married women in rural Odisha, India. This is a group for whom highly-gendered norms around marriage, mobility and work are likely to shape opportunities to form and maintain meaningful ties with other women. We track the social networks of 2,170 mothers over four years, and find a high degree of isolation. Wealthier women and women from more-advantaged castes and tribes have smaller social networks than their less-advantaged peers. These gradients are primarily driven by the fact that more-advantaged women are less likely to know other women within the same socioeconomic group than are less-advantaged women. There exists strong homophily by socioeconomic status (SES) that is symmetric across socioeconomic groups. Mediation analysis shows that SES differences in social isolation are strongly associated with ownership of toilets and labor force participation. Further research should investigate the formation and role of female networks.
Authors
CPP Co-Director
Orazio is an International Research Fellow at the IFS, a Professor at Yale and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Research Fellow Yale University
Costas is a Research Fellow of the IFS and a Professor of Economics at Yale University and a Visiting Professor at University College London.
University of Pennsylvania
Associate Director
Britta is an IFS Associate Director, Associate Staff at the Department of Economics at the UC and Researcher at NIHR Obesity Policy Research Unit.
Research Fellow
Alison is a Senior Research Economist of our Institute with research interests in the economics of gender, marriage and education.
Angus Phimister
Monimalika Day
Journal article details
- Publisher
- NBER
- Issue
- November 2020
Suggested citation
Andrew, A et al. (2020). 'Mothers’ social networks and socioeconomic gradients of isolation' (2020)
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