IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ind/cdswpp/404.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Employment growth in rural India: Distress driven?

Author

Listed:
  • Vinoj Abraham

    (Centre for Development Studies)

Abstract

The 61st round of NSS shows that there is a turnaround in employment growth in rural India after a phase of `jobless growth'. Paradoxically, this employment growth occurred during a period of wide spread distress in agriculture sector that include low productivity, price instability and stagnation leading to indebtedness. Under the typical neoclassical tradition, this trend would have predicted further contraction of employment in the rural economy. However, further probing reveals that employment growth in the rural areas is probably a response to the crisis that is gripping the agriculture sector. Under conditions of distress, when income levels fall below sustenance then that part of the normally non-working population are forced to enter the labour market to supplement the household income. The decline of agricultural sector has also probably created forced sectoral and regional mobility of the normally working population with the normally non-working population complementing them.

Suggested Citation

  • Vinoj Abraham, 2008. "Employment growth in rural India: Distress driven?," Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum Working Papers 404, Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum, India.
    • Handle: RePEc:ind:cdswpp:404
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cds.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/wp404.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. K.N. Nair & Vineetha Menon, 2007. "Distress debt and suicides among agrarian households: Findings from three village studies in Kerala," Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum Working Papers 397, Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum, India.
    2. K. Sundaram, 2007. "Employment and Poverty in India: 2000-2005," Working Papers id:1100, eSocialSciences.
    3. Hrushikesh Mallick, 2008. "Government Spending, Trade Openness and Economic Growth in India: A Time Series Analysis," Working Papers id:1809, eSocialSciences.
    4. David Bloom & David Canning & Günther Fink & Jocelyn Finlay, 2009. "Fertility, female labor force participation, and the demographic dividend," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 79-101, June.
    5. Kristin Mammen & Christina Paxson, 2000. "Women's Work and Economic Development," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(4), pages 141-164, Fall.
    6. Singh, Inderjit & Squire, Lyn & Strauss, John, 1986. "A Survey of Agricultural Household Models: Recent Findings and Policy Implications," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 1(1), pages 149-179, September.
    7. K.N. Nair & Vineetha Menon & Vineetha Menon, 2007. "Agrarian distress and livelihood strategies: A Study in Pulpalli panchayat, Wayanad District, Kerala," Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum Working Papers 396, Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum, India.
    8. Schultz, T. Paul, 1995. "Human Capital and Economic Development," 1994 Conference, August 22-29, 1994, Harare, Zimbabwe 183410, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. 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.
    10. Sharif, Mohammed, 1991. "Poverty and the forward-falling labor supply function: A microeconomic analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1075-1093, August.
    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. Isis Gaddis & Stephan Klasen, 2014. "Economic development, structural change, and women’s labor force participation:," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 27(3), pages 639-681, July.
    2. Finlay, Jocelyn E., 2021. "Women’s reproductive health and economic activity: A narrative review," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    3. Motkuri, Venkatanarayana, 2016. "Levels of Development and Female Labour Participation Rates in Rural India," MPRA Paper 84602, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Daniel Aaronson & Rajeev Dehejia & Andrew Jordan & Cristian Pop-Eleches & Cyrus Samii & Karl Schulze, 2021. "The Effect of Fertility on Mothers’ Labor Supply over the Last Two Centuries [Semiparametric instrumental variables estimation of treatment response models]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(633), pages 1-32.
    5. David Bloom & David Canning & Günther Fink & Jocelyn Finlay, 2009. "Fertility, female labor force participation, and the demographic dividend," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 14(2), pages 79-101, June.
    6. Dessing, Maryke, 2002. "Labor supply, the family and poverty: the S-shaped labor supply curve," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 433-458, December.
    7. Hanan Nazier & Racha Ramadan, 2016. "Women's Participation in Labor Market in Egypt: Constraints and Opportunities," Working Papers 999, Economic Research Forum, revised May 2016.
    8. Ilhom Abdulloev & Ira N Gang & Myeong-Su Yun, 2014. "Migration, Education and the Gender Gap in Labour Force Participation," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 26(4), pages 509-526, September.
    9. Mohammed SHARIF, 2000. "Inverted “S”—The complete neoclassical labour-supply function," International Labour Review, International Labour Organization, vol. 139(4), pages 409-435, December.
    10. Nguyen Thang Dao & Julio Dávila & Angela Greulich, 2021. "The education gender gap and the demographic transition in developing countries," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(2), pages 431-474, April.
    11. Paolo Verme, 2015. "Economic development and female labor participation in the Middle East and North Africa: a test of the U-shape hypothesis," IZA Journal of Labor & Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 4(1), pages 1-21, December.
    12. Chaudhary, Ruchika. & Verick, Sher., 2014. "Female labour force participation in India and beyond," ILO Working Papers 994867893402676, International Labour Organization.
    13. Mehrotra, Santosh & Parida, Jajati K., 2017. "Why is the Labour Force Participation of Women Declining in India?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 360-380.
    14. Kanika Mahajan & Bharat Ramaswami, 2017. "Caste, Female Labor Supply, and the Gender Wage Gap in India: Boserup Revisited," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 339-378.
    15. Lee, Bun Song & Jang, Soomyung & Sarkar, Jayanta, 2008. "Women's labor force participation and marriage: The case of Korea," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(2), pages 138-154, April.
    16. Doepke, M. & Tertilt, M., 2016. "Families in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 1789-1891, Elsevier.
    17. Amaia Altuzarra & Catalina Gálvez-Gálvez & Ana González-Flores, 2019. "Economic Development and Female Labour Force Participation: The Case of European Union Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-18, April.
    18. World Bank, 2010. "Arab Republic of Egypt : Gender assessment 2010," World Bank Publications - Reports 3003, The World Bank Group.
    19. Blum, Matthias, 2014. "Estimating male and female height inequality," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 14(C), pages 103-108.
    20. Bhalotra, Sonia, 2010. "Fatal fluctuations? Cyclicality in infant mortality in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 7-19, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Rural Employment; Gender; Rural Wages; Labour Participation; Poverty; Agrarian Distress;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J43 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Agricultural Labor Markets
    • J31 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Wage Level and Structure; Wage Differentials

    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:ind:cdswpp:404. 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: Shamprasad M. Pujar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdsacin.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.