 Gender-Specific Transportation Costs and Female Time Use: Evidence from India’s Pink Slip ProgramYutong Chen, Kerem Cosar, Devaki Ghose, Shirish Mahendru and Sheetal Sekhri No 19122, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research Abstract: Reducing gender-specific commuting barriers in developing countries can have heterogeneous effects on women’s labor outcomes. We study a program that offers free bus rides for women in several Indian states (the Pink Slip program) using a synthetic difference-in-differences approach to examine impacts on transportation expenditures, time use, and labor supply. We find that the program substantially reduces bus-related expenditures. However, when considering all women together, we find no significant changes in travel time, household production, or labor supply. Beneath these aggregate effects, responses vary sharply by employment, marital status, and education. Unmarried women employed prior to the policy increase labor supply, while married women with low and medium levels of education reallocate time away from paid work toward household chores. Overall employment rates remain unchanged in the short run, highlighting that reducing commuting costs does not uniformly improve women’s labor market outcomes. Keywords: Transport; Gender; Time-use; Female labour force participation (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:19122 Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX, UK. |
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