The right to work and to live: The implications of India's NREGS program for missing women

Trupti Chaure and Daniel Hicks

Social Science Quarterly, 2021, vol. 102, issue 6, 2528-2551

Abstract: Objective Limited economic opportunity for women reduces their household bargaining power and the economic value of daughters, amplifying son preference. This paper studies India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the largest workfare program in the world. Methods In a setting where the gender gap in employment and wages are sizeable, NREGS represented both an income shock and a large relative improvement in the labor market for women. We use the staggered rollout of NREGS to show that districts that implemented the program earlier experienced an improvement in child sex ratios in favor of girls. Results We find that impacts exist only in rural areas, not in the urban counterparts of the same district, where NREGS did not operate. Furthermore, effects are larger in middle‐income and upper income districts and districts with the most skewed initial sex ratios, results which are inconsistent with an alternative selection story. Finally, the effects appear only for rural youth sex ratios, not for adult sex ratios, suggesting endogenous migration is not driving the results. Conclusion Our results suggest that the adoption of NREGS may have decreased pressures associated with sex selection in India, lessening skewed sex ratios in rural areas.

Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12993

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:socsci:v:102:y:2021:i:6:p:2528-2551

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0038-4941

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science Quarterly is currently edited by Robert L. Lineberry

More articles in Social Science Quarterly from Southwestern Social Science Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().