This dissertation examines how social structures mediate economic outcomes in India, through three essays on informal insurance, public health delivery, and gender inequality. Chapter 1 asks whether a household's rank in the village income distribution shapes the informal insurance it obtains. Using ICRISAT panel data from three villages, it shows that rank is a powerful predictor of consumption dynamics, and embeds position-dependent enforcement in a limited commitment model: fit improves by 46 to 56 percent, driven by cross-sectional consumption dispersion. Chapter 2 asks whether the distrust created by India's Emergency-era sterilization campaign (1975-77) can be repaired. Event studies across six national survey rounds (1998-2021, about 2.1 million observations) show no short-run narrowing of the utilization deficit, then gradual convergence over a decade to fifteen years, with a recovery half-life of eight to ten years, consistent with trust rebuilt through sustained contact with community health workers rather than cash incentives alone. Chapter 3 asks whether gendered grammar contributes to gender inequality. Exploiting linguistic borders within the Dravidian family, it finds that exposure to Telugu grammar, which groups women with non-human referents, is associated with lower female education and literacy and more restrictive gender norms, with effects compounding where mother tongue and region align. Together, the essays show that village hierarchies, institutional trust, and linguistic categories are quantitatively important determinants of welfare, and neither static nor easily overridden by standard policy instruments.
