IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvco/2022023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Impact of Forced Sterilization on Female Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from India

Author

Listed:
  • Prasad, Niranjana

    (Université catholique de Louvain, LIDAM/CORE, Belgium)

Abstract

I investigate the impact of the 1975-76 forced sterilization campaign carried out by the Indira Gandhi government in India on women’s long run labor market outcomes. Using large data samples from India and accounting for endogeneity concerns, I find that exposure to the forced sterilization campaign at the district-level reduces long-term labor market participation by 4.5% and 1.5% in agricultural and sales occupations and increases unemployment by 4.7% and I elucidate mechanisms. The proposed mechanism of this is the disutility derived from having a working wife. This result is contrary to existing literature that indicates that women’s access to contraception increases their labor market participation, in the context of coercive sterilization campaigns.

Suggested Citation

  • Prasad, Niranjana, 2022. "Impact of Forced Sterilization on Female Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from India," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2022023, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvco:2022023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://dial.uclouvain.be/pr/boreal/en/object/boreal%3A265922/datastream/PDF_01/view
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McCabe, James L. & Rosenzweig, Mark R., 1976. "Female labor-force participation, occupational choice, and fertility in developing countries," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 141-160, July.
    2. Grant Miller, 2010. "Contraception as Development? New Evidence from Family Planning in Colombia," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(545), pages 709-736, June.
    3. Alberto Abadie & Susan Athey & Guido W Imbens & Jeffrey M Wooldridge, 2023. "When Should You Adjust Standard Errors for Clustering?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 138(1), pages 1-35.
    4. Maitreyi Bordia Das, and Sonalde Desai, 2003. "Why are educated women less likely to be employed in India? Testing competing hypotheses," Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes 27868, The World Bank.
    5. Nava Ashraf & Erica Field & Jean Lee, 2014. "Household Bargaining and Excess Fertility: An Experimental Study in Zambia," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(7), pages 2210-2237, July.
    6. Stephan Klasen & Janneke Pieters, 2015. "What Explains the Stagnation of Female Labor Force Participation in Urban India?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank Group, vol. 29(3), pages 449-478.
    7. Mukesh Eswaran, 2002. "The empowerment of women, fertility, and child mortality: Towards a theoretical analysis," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 15(3), pages 433-454.
    8. A. Colin Cameron & Douglas L. Miller, 2015. "A Practitioner’s Guide to Cluster-Robust Inference," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 50(2), pages 317-372.
    9. 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.
    10. Anderson, Siwan & Eswaran, Mukesh, 2009. "What determines female autonomy? Evidence from Bangladesh," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(2), pages 179-191, November.
    11. Stephan Klasen & Francesca Lamanna, 2009. "The Impact of Gender Inequality in Education and Employment on Economic Growth: New Evidence for a Panel of Countries," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 91-132.
    12. Lucia Hanmer & Jeni Klugman, 2016. "Exploring Women's Agency and Empowerment in Developing Countries: Where do we stand?," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 237-263, January.
    13. Matthew Connelly, 2006. "Population Control in India: Prologue to the Emergency Period," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 32(4), pages 629-667, December.
    14. Mehak Ejaz, 2007. "Determinants of Female Labor Force Participation in Pakistan An Empirical Analysis of PSLM (2004-05) Micro Data," Lahore Journal of Economics, Department of Economics, The Lahore School of Economics, vol. 12(Special E), pages 204-235, September.
    15. Bardhan, Pranab K, 1979. "Labor Supply Functions in a Poor Agrarian Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 69(1), pages 73-83, March.
    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. Chaudhary, Ruchika. & Verick, Sher., 2014. "Female labour force participation in India and beyond," ILO Working Papers 994867893402676, International Labour Organization.
    2. repec:ilo:ilowps:486789 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Laszlo, Sonia & Grantham, Kate & Oskay, Ecem & Zhang, Tingting, 2020. "Grappling with the challenges of measuring women's economic empowerment in intrahousehold settings," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 132(C).
    4. Stephan Klasen & Janneke Pieters, 2015. "What Explains the Stagnation of Female Labor Force Participation in Urban India?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 29(3), pages 449-478.
    5. Rachel Heath & Seema Jayachandran, 2016. "The Causes and Consequences of Increased Female Education and Labor Force Participation in Developing Countries," Working Papers id:11434, eSocialSciences.
    6. Margaux Suteau, 2020. "Inheritance Rights and Women's Empowerment in the Labor and Marriage Markets," THEMA Working Papers 2020-17, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    7. Olivia Bertelli, 2015. "The more the merrier? Adjusting fertility to weather shocks," Working Papers halshs-01226421, HAL.
    8. Alidou, Sahawal & Verpoorten, Marijke, 2019. "Only women can whisper to gods: Voodoo, menopause and women’s autonomy," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 40-54.
    9. Annan, Jeannie & Donald, Aletheia & Goldstein, Markus & Gonzalez Martinez, Paula & Koolwal, Gayatri, 2021. "Taking power: Women’s empowerment and household Well-being in Sub-Saharan Africa," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    10. Sojin Yu & Feinian Chen & Sonalde Desai, 2023. "Aligning household decision-making with work and education: A comparative analysis of women’s empowerment," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 48(19), pages 513-548.
    11. Catherine Bros & Véronique Gille & François Maniquet, 2023. "Female labour, status and decision power," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 90(358), pages 453-476, April.
    12. Dhanaraj, Sowmya & Mahambare, Vidya, 2019. "Family structure, education and women’s employment in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 17-29.
    13. Siwan Anderson, 2022. "Unbundling female empowerment," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 55(4), pages 1671-1701, November.
    14. Cassidy, Rachel & Groot Bruinderink, Marije & Janssens, Wendy & Morsink, Karlijn, 2021. "The power to protect: Household bargaining and female condom use," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C).
    15. Peterman, Amber & Schwab, Benjamin & Roy, Shalini & Hidrobo, Melissa & Gilligan, Daniel O., 2021. "Measuring women’s decisionmaking: Indicator choice and survey design experiments from cash and food transfer evaluations in Ecuador, Uganda and Yemen," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    16. Panu Poutvaara & Maximilian Schwefer, 2018. "Husbands’ and wives’ diverging perceptions on who decides," ifo Working Paper Series 279, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    17. Klaus Deininger & Songqing Jin & Hari K. Nagarajan & Fang Xia, 2019. "Inheritance Law Reform, Empowerment, and Human Capital Accumulation: Second-Generation Effects from India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(12), pages 2549-2571, December.
    18. Charlotte Pelras & Andrea Renk, 2022. "When Sterilizations Lower Immunizations: The Emergency Experience in India (1975-77)," DeFiPP Working Papers 2206, University of Namur, Development Finance and Public Policies.
    19. Charlotte Pelras & Andrea Renk, 2021. "Sterilizations and immunization in India: The Emergency experience (1975-1977)," DeFiPP Working Papers 2105, University of Namur, Development Finance and Public Policies.
    20. Bethencourt, Carlos & Santos-Torres, Daniel, 2023. "Gender-role identity in adolescence and women fertility in adulthood," MPRA Paper 116321, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Olivia Bertelli, 2015. "The more the merrier? Adjusting fertility to weather shocks," PSE Working Papers halshs-01226421, HAL.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    India ; Emergency ; family planning ; sterilization ; labor market outcomes;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cor:louvco:2022023. 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: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.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.