Why Are Fewer Married Women Joining the Work Force in India? A Decomposition Analysis over Two Decades

Farzana Afridi, Taryn Dinkelman and Kanika Mahajan

No 9722, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Unlike the global trend, India has witnessed a secular decline in women's employment rates over the past few decades. We use parametric and semi-parametric decomposition techniques to show that changes in individual and household attributes fully account for the fall in women's labor force participation rate in 1987-1999 and account for half of the decline in this rate in 1999-2009. Our findings underscore increasing education levels amongst rural married women and the men in their households as the most prominent attributes contributing to this decline. We provide suggestive evidence that a rise in more educated women's returns to home production, relative to their returns in the labor market, may have adversely affected female labor force participation rates in India.

Keywords: decomposition analysis; female labor force participation; education; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J21 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (28)

Published - published in: Journal of Population Economics, 2018, 31 (3), 783-818

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