Indian paradox: Rising education, declining womens' employment

Chatterjee, Esha; Desai, Sonalde; Vanneman, Reeve

doi:10.4054/demres.2018.38.31

Cited by 96 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Our first alternative definition follows the definition of Chatterjee, Desai and Vanneman () of women's labour market participation. According to this definition, a woman is considered to be participating in the labour market only if she has worked for at least 240 h in the previous year across all types of work.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age at Marriage and Women's Labour Market Outcomes in India

Dhamija

Roychowdhury

2020

J of Intl Development

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We examine the relationship between women's age at marriage and their labour market outcomes using nationally representative household data from India. Employing an instrumental variable‐based empirical strategy, we find that a delay in women's age at marriage has no significant causal effect on their labour market outcomes. This is despite marriage delay being associated with higher education, lower fertility and (possibly) higher dowry for Indian women. We argue that this might be because older brides, as compared with younger brides, face more backlash from their partners. This backlash effect could be offsetting the positive labour market effects of marriage delay. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Age at Marriage and Women's Labour Market Outcomes in India

Dhamija

Roychowdhury

2020

J of Intl Development

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“…However, if this is the explanation for declining women's labour force participation, then we should see an accentuation of the familiar U-shaped curve (Chatterjee et al 2018 The Indian Journal of Labour Economics (2019) 62:55-71…”

Section: Rising Education and Withdrawal From Labour Forcementioning

confidence: 99%

The Paradox of Declining Female Work Participation in an Era of Economic Growth

Desai

Joshi

2019

Ind. J. Labour Econ.

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The past three decades have seen the advent of major transformations in the Indian economy. The economy has achieved average growth rates of 5-9%, education has risen sharply for both men and women, fertility rates have declined, and infrastructure facilities, particularly access to electricity, cooking gas and piped water, have improved. All these factors are expected to reduce the demand for women's time spent in domestic chores and increase their opportunities for paid work. Paradoxically, however, the National Sample Surveys document a substantial decline in women's work participation rates (WPRs), particularly for rural women. Optimistic interpretation of these trends suggests that increasing prosperity accounts for women's labour force withdrawal. For young women, rising school and college enrolment is incompatible with demands of the workforce. For both young and older women, rising prosperity allows for withdrawal from economic activities to focus on domestic duties. Pessimistic interpretations of these trends suggest that it is absence of suitable jobs rather than women's withdrawal from the labour force that accounts for declining female work participation. A third explanation focuses on increasing measurement errors in work participation data from the National Sample Surveys. This paper examines these diverse explanations using data from National Sample Surveys and India Human Development Surveys for 2004-2005 and 2011-2012 and finds that: (1) Decline in rural women's work participation recorded by National Sample Surveys may be overstated; (2) supply factors explain a relatively small proportion of the decline in women's work participation rates; (3) public policies such as improvement and transportation facilities and MGNREGS that enhance work opportunities for women are associated with increased participation by women in the work force.

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“…There are a number of factors that could be keeping Indian women out of the labor force. Family income effects are found to be an important component of why women are kept out of the labor force despite their increasing education (Chatterjee, Desai, and Vanneman 2018). Some argue that declining female employment could be due to a strong crowding-out effect for high-skilled workers, stagnating growth in the size of the white-collar sector, and a weakening of the positive effect of education on female labor force participation (Klasen and Pieters 2015).…”

Section: Review Of the Literature 21 Female Labor Force Participatiomentioning

confidence: 99%

The labor force participation of Indian women before and after widowhood

Reed¹

2020

DemRes

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BACKGROUND Due to its young age structure and taboos on widow remarriage, India has a large and relatively young female widow population. Many of India's widows are in prime working ages. India has one of the lowest female labor force participation rates in the world. OBJECTIVE This paper calculates the effect of widowhood on the labor force participation of Indian widows. The analysis documents how labor force participation changes associated with widowhood vary by age, caste/religion, relation to head of household, rural/urban status, and region. METHODS Using the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), the analysis tracks 3,217 women who experience the loss of their spouse between the two survey waves. Individual fixed effects regressions are used to measure the association between the transition to widowhood and changes in the number of days worked in the past year. RESULTS Widowhood was associated with a decrease in days worked for older women; but for women widowed before age 52, widowhood was associated with a large increase in the number of days they worked. Widows who joined the labor force were more likely to gain employment in permanent and salaried work than married women. Widows who resided with their in-laws or who became the household head after their husband's death saw increases in their work participation whereas those who lived in households headed by their adult children experienced negative widowhood effects on their work participation. CONTRIBUTION These findings highlight the important link between marital status and female employment in India.

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Indian paradox: Rising education, declining womens' employment

Cited by 96 publications

References 20 publications

Age at Marriage and Women's Labour Market Outcomes in India

Age at Marriage and Women's Labour Market Outcomes in India

The Paradox of Declining Female Work Participation in an Era of Economic Growth

The labor force participation of Indian women before and after widowhood

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