IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/alo/isipdp/13-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Female labor force participation and child education in India: The Effect of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme

Author

Listed:
  • Farzana Afridi

    (Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi)

  • Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay

    (Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi)

  • Soham Sahoo

    (Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi)

Abstract

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) of India mandates 1/3rd of beneficiaries to be women and equal wages across gender. We study its impact on children's educational attainment via women's increased access to labor market opportunities. Using child level panel data, and taking advantage of the temporal, subdistrict level variation in the intensity of implementation of the NREGS, we find that a rise in mother's share in parental NREGS workdays increases school attendance and grade attainment of her children, particularly girls. This impact is over and above any income effect induced by the scheme.

Suggested Citation

  • Farzana Afridi & Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay & Soham Sahoo, 2013. "Female labor force participation and child education in India: The Effect of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme," Discussion Papers 13-03, Indian Statistical Institute, Delhi.
    • Handle: RePEc:alo:isipdp:13-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.isid.ac.in/~pu/dispapers/dp13-03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hoddinott, John & Haddad, Lawrence, 1995. "Does Female Income Share Influence Household Expenditures? Evidence from Cote d'Ivoire," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 57(1), pages 77-96, February.
    2. Duncan Thomas, 1990. "Intra-Household Resource Allocation: An Inferential Approach," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 25(4), pages 635-664.
    3. Anderson, Siwan & Eswaran, Mukesh, 2009. "What determines female autonomy? Evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 179-191, November.
    4. Duncan Thomas, 1994. "Like Father, like Son; Like Mother, like Daughter: Parental Resources and Child Height," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 29(4), pages 950-988.
    5. World Bank, 2012. "World Development Report 2013 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2013]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 11843, December.
    6. Nancy Qian, 2008. "Missing Women and the Price of Tea in China: The Effect of Sex-Specific Earnings on Sex Imbalance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 1251-1285.
    7. Andrew D. Foster & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 1996. "Comparative Advantage, Information and the Allocation of Workers to Tasks: Evidence from an Agricultural Labour Market," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(3), pages 347-374.
    8. Skoufias, Emmanuel, 1993. "Labor market opportunities and intrafamily time allocation in rural households in South Asia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 277-310, April.
    9. Rosenzweig, Mark R & Schultz, T Paul, 1982. "Market Opportunities, Genetic Endowments, and Intrafamily Resource Distribution: Child Survival in Rural India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 72(4), pages 803-815, September.
    10. Haddad, Lawrence & Hoddinott, John, 1994. "Women's income and boy-girl anthropometric status in the Cote d'Ivoire," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 543-553, April.
    11. Khera, Reetika (ed.), 2011. "The Battle for Employment Guarantee," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198070627.
    12. Agnes R. Quisumbing & John A. Maluccio, 2003. "Resources at Marriage and Intrahousehold Allocation: Evidence from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and South Africa," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 65(3), pages 283-327, July.
    13. Azam, Mehtabul, 2012. "The Impact of Indian Job Guarantee Scheme on Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 6548, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. World Bank, 2012. "World Development Report 2012 [Rapport sur le développement dans le monde 2012]," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 4391, December.
    15. Luke, Nancy & Munshi, Kaivan, 2011. "Women as agents of change: Female income and mobility in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1), pages 1-17, January.
    16. McElroy, Marjorie B & Horney, Mary Jean, 1981. "Nash-Bargained Household Decisions: Toward a Generalization of the Theory of Demand," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 22(2), pages 333-349, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Farzana Afridi & Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay & Soham Sahoo, 2016. "Female labor force participation and child education in India: evidence from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 5(1), pages 1-27, December.
    2. Matthias Doepke & Michèle Tertilt, 2019. "Does female empowerment promote economic development?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 309-343, December.
    3. Sofia Amaral & Siddhartha Bandyopadhyay & Rudra Sensarma, 2015. "Public Work Programs and Gender-based Violence: The Case of NREGA in India," Discussion Papers 15-09, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    4. Xu, Zeyu, 2007. "A survey on intra-household models and evidence," MPRA Paper 3763, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2859-2939 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Majlesi, Kaveh, 2016. "Labor market opportunities and women's decision making power within households," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 34-47.
    7. Ganita BHUPAL & Abdoul G. SAM, 2014. "Female Income and Expenditure on Children: Impact of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India," Applied Econometrics and International Development, Euro-American Association of Economic Development, vol. 14(2).
    8. Lixing Li & Xiaoyu Wu & Yi Zhou, 2021. "Intra-household bargaining power, surname inheritance, and human capital accumulation," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(1), pages 35-61, January.
    9. Wang, Shing-Yi, 2014. "Property rights and intra-household bargaining," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 192-201.
    10. Tanika Chakraborty & Sukkoo Kim, 2008. "Caste, Kinship and Sex Ratios in India," NBER Working Papers 13828, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Doss, Cheryl, 2013. "Intrahousehold bargaining and resource allocation in developing countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6337, The World Bank.
    12. Jacob, Arun, 2016. "Gender Bias in Educational Attainment in India : The Role of Dowry Payments," MPRA Paper 76338, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Yang Yang, 2023. "Hukou Identity and Economic Behaviours: A Social Identity Perspective," Erudite Ph.D Dissertations, Erudite, number ph23-02 edited by Catherine Bros & Julie Lochard, December.
    14. Morton, Gregory Duff, 2019. "The power of lump sums: Using maternity payment schedules to reduce the gender asset gap in households reached by Brazil’s Bolsa Família conditional cash transfer," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 352-367.
    15. Leora Friedberg & Anthony Webb, 2006. "Determinants and Consequences of Bargaining Power in Households," NBER Working Papers 12367, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Chloé van Biljon & Dieter von Fintel & Atika Pasha, 2018. "Bargaining to work: the effect of female autonomy on female labour supply," Working Papers 04/2018, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    17. Astrid Sneyers & Anneleen Vandeplas, 2013. "Girl Power in Agricultural Production: How Much Does it Yield? A Case-Study on the Dairy Sector in India," LICOS Discussion Papers 34113, LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance, KU Leuven.
    18. Song, L., 1999. "In Search of Gender Bias in Household Resource Allocation in Rural China," Economics Series Working Papers 99212, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    19. Sun, Ang & Zhao, Yaohui, 2016. "Divorce, abortion, and the child sex ratio: The impact of divorce reform in China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 53-69.
    20. Pareena G. Lawrence & Marakah Mancini, 2008. "La toma de decisiones de los hogares en Venezuela," Revista de Economía Institucional, Universidad Externado de Colombia - Facultad de Economía, vol. 10(18), pages 213-239, January-J.
    21. Agier, Isabelle & Guérin, Isabelle & Szafarz, Ariane, 2012. "Child gender and parental borrowing: Evidence from India," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 115(3), pages 363-365.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labor; education; gender; bargaining;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:alo:isipdp:13-03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Debasis Mishra (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/isindin.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.