IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/gigawp/196.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Puzzling Decline in Rural Women's Labor Force Participation in India: A Reexamination

Author

Listed:
  • Neff, Daniel
  • Sen, Kunal
  • Kling, Veronika

Abstract

Between 2004/2005 and 2009/2010 there was a sharp fall in female labor force participation (LFP) in rural India. Why did this occur? We look at the four standard explanations: that more women in rural areas are now pursuing higher education and are therefore not available for work (education effect), that household incomes are rising quickly enough that there is a tendency for women to withdraw from the labor force to attend to domestic duties (income effect), that employment opportunities for women are decreasing, and that social and cultural factors may be interacting with these three factors and amplifying their effects. Our findings suggest that the decline in rural women's LFP could potentially be due to an income effect and partly due to an education effect. We find no evidence of changes in employment opportunities or of social and cultural interaction effects that could explain the decline in rural female LFP.

Suggested Citation

  • Neff, Daniel & Sen, Kunal & Kling, Veronika, 2012. "The Puzzling Decline in Rural Women's Labor Force Participation in India: A Reexamination," GIGA Working Papers 196, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:gigawp:196
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/58261/1/716183242.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vinoj Abraham, 2008. "Employment growth in rural India: Distress driven?," Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum Working Papers 404, Centre for Development Studies, Trivendrum, India.
    2. Dreze, Jean & Srinivasan, P. V., 1997. "Widowhood and poverty in rural India: Some inferences from household survey data," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 217-234, December.
    3. Wendy Olsen & University of Manchester & Smita Mehta & Cambridge University, 2006. "A Pluralist Account of Labour Participation in India," Economics Series Working Papers GPRG-WPS-042, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    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. van de Walle, Dominique, 2011. "Lasting welfare effects of widowhood in a poor country," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5734, The World Bank.
    4. Akanksha Srivastava & Sanjay Mohanty, 2012. "Poverty Among Elderly in India," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 109(3), pages 493-514, December.
    5. Gautier, Axel & Wauthy, Xavier, 2012. "Competitively neutral universal service obligations," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 254-261.
    6. Sabyasachi TRIPATHI, 2018. "What Determines Employability In India?," Management Research and Practice, Research Centre in Public Administration and Public Services, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 10(3), pages 40-59, September.
    7. Maryam Sabreen & Deepak Kumar Behera, 2020. "Changing Structure of Rural Employment in Bihar: Issues and Challenges," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 63(3), pages 833-845, September.
    8. Sonali Chakraborty, 2019. "Contribution of the Unpaid Family Labour in the Handloom Sector of Textile Industry in West Bengal," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 62(4), pages 693-713, December.
    9. Pritchett, Lant & Suryahadi, Asep & Sumarto, Sudarno, 2000. "Quantifying vulnerability to poverty - a proposed measure, applied to Indonesia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2437, The World Bank.
    10. Frieda Vandeninden, 2010. "Social Pensions in Europe: The Aim, The Impact and The Cost," CREPP Working Papers 1007, Centre de Recherche en Economie Publique et de la Population (CREPP) (Research Center on Public and Population Economics) HEC-Management School, University of Liège.
    11. Oginni, Ayodeji & Ahonsi, Babatunde & Ukwuije, Francis, 2013. "Are female-headed households typically poorer than male-headed households in Nigeria?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 132-137.
    12. Manoj K. Pandey, 2013. "Elderly's Health Shocks and Household's Ex-ante Poverty in India," ASARC Working Papers 2013-01, The Australian National University, Australia South Asia Research Centre.
    13. Singh, Alka & Pal, Suresh & Jha, Girish Kumar, 2015. "Transitioning India's Public Expenditure in Agriculture towards Higher Growth and Equity," Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, Indian Society of Agricultural Economics, vol. 70(3), pages 1-13.
    14. Terese E. Venus & Stephanie Bilgram & Johannes Sauer & Arun Khatri-Chettri, 2022. "Livelihood vulnerability and climate change: a comparative analysis of smallholders in the Indo-Gangetic plains," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 24(2), pages 1981-2009, February.
    15. Kelly, Orla & Krishna, Aditi & Bhabha, Jacqueline, 2016. "Private schooling and gender justice: An empirical snapshot from Rajasthan, India's largest state," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 175-187.
    16. World Bank, 2001. "Risk Management in South Asia : A Poverty Focused Approach," World Bank Publications - Reports 15449, The World Bank Group.
    17. Amrita Datta & Tanuka Endow & Balwant Singh Mehta, 2020. "Education, Caste and Women’s Work in India," The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, Springer;The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE), vol. 63(2), pages 387-406, June.
    18. Maitra, Pushkar & Ray, Ranjan, 2003. "The effect of transfers on household expenditure patterns and poverty in South Africa," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 23-49, June.
    19. Kaushal, Neeraj, 2014. "How Public Pension affects Elderly Labor Supply and Well-being: Evidence from India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 214-225.
    20. Thapa, Rukmini, 2015. "Aspects of Agrarian Distress and Rural Unemployment in West Bengal: A post reform analysis," MPRA Paper 112952, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 08 Oct 2015.
    21. Bhaumik, Sumon Kumar & Gang, Ira N. & Yun, Myeong-Su, 2006. "Ethnic conflict and economic disparity: Serbians and Albanians in Kosovo," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 754-773, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labor force; women; rural; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J00 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - General
    • J20 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - General
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

    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:zbw:gigawp:196. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dueiide.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.