Do “beef Bans” Affect Women’s Health?

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of cultural institutions in India on women’s health and development. It investigates a particular cultural institution - the religious norm that bans cattle slaughter and beef sale/possession in much of India. The majority of the Indian population belongs to religions that consider cows to be sacred. In several sacred Hindu texts, the avoidance of beef consumption is established and regularly reinforced as one of the most important practices. The earliest known reference to a legal ban on cow slaughter is an engraving dated 412 CE on a stupa in Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh, during the reign of Chandragupta II of the Gupta dynasty. Studying the effects of such historical religious norms is important but challenging. For this purpose, we compile the first-ever historical state-level panel data on legislation banning cattle slaughter and beef sale/possession in India from 1950 to the present. We collect and assemble legislative data from 26 Indian states in many different local languages, along with federal documents. We devise a variety of identification strategies to get a sense of the causal effect of beef bans. For instance, we look at state level rollout of beef bans over time and compare the effects on upper caste Hindus, Sikhs, and Jains ( who traditionally don’t consume beef) with the effects on lower caste Hindus, Muslims, and Christians (who traditionally do consume beef). We then combine our data on cultural institutions with 1) household and individual level data on beef consumption from national sample surveys and 2) biomarkers from demographic and health surveys. Using a triple difference-in-differences model, we show that beef bans reduce beef consumption, and reduce women’s hemoglobin in communities that traditionally eat beef.