Demographic Shocks and Women’s Labor Market Participation: Evidence from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in India

James Fenske, Bishnupriya Gupta and Song Yuan

The Journal of Economic History, 2022, vol. 82, issue 3, 875-912

Abstract: How did the 1918 influenza pandemic affect female labor force participation in India over the short run and the medium run? We use an event-study approach at the district level and four waves of decadal census data in order to answer this question. We find that districts most adversely affected by influenza mortality saw a temporary increase in female labor force participation in 1921, an increase that was concentrated in the service sector. We find suggestive evidence that distress labor supply by widows and rising wages help account for this result.

Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
Working Paper: Demographic shocks and women’s labor market participation: evidence from the 1918 influenza pandemic in India (2020)
Working Paper: DEMOGRAPHIC SHOCKS AND WOMEN'S LABOR MARKET PARTICIPATION: EVIDENCE FROM THE 1918 INFLUENZA PANDEMIC IN INDIA (2020)
Working Paper: Demographic Shocks and Wowen's Labor Market Participation: Evidence from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in India (2020)
Working Paper: Demographic shocks and women’s labor market participation: evidence from the 1918 influenza pandemic in india (2020)
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:cup:jechis:v:82:y:2022:i:3:p:875-912_8

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in The Journal of Economic History from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().