Ticket to ride: Impact of free public transport on women's workforce participation in India

Udayan Rathore and Ashish Singh

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Abstract: We leverage a quasi natural experiment from India on introduction of free bus schemes for women across five states to study it's impact on women's workforce participation. We use two rounds of the representative Time Use Survey and a triple difference estimation strategy, complemented by an event study framework to identify the causal relationship of interest. Findings reveal that the bus scheme was successful in improving women's paid work participation and duration of employment. We confirm that these results are not merely a continuation of prior trends. The scheme's effects are concentrated among early adopters like Punjab and Tamil Nadu, two states with historically different levels of women's workforce participation. We also find disproportionately higher effects for women residing in more patriarchal districts with higher mobility restrictions. We argue that the scheme works through easing of non-financial binding constraints, which lowers the barriers to women's mobility and workforce participation.

Date: 2026-04
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