Female Labour Force Participation in India: An Empirical Study

Syamantak Chattopadhyay () and Subhanil Chowdhury ()
Additional contact information
Syamantak Chattopadhyay: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences Calcutta
Subhanil Chowdhury: St. Xavier’s University Kolkata

The Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 2022, vol. 65, issue 1, No 4, 59-83

Abstract: Abstract This paper attempts to analyse the factors which affect Indian working age women’s continuous withdrawal from the labourforce. The main objective deals with two specific questions: probing the empirical validity of the U-hypothesis and exploring whether supply side factors could sufficiently explain the falling FLFPR in India, especially in its rural sectors. Through a review of available empirical literature, factors like social constraints, upward mobility among lower castes and household burden have been identified as some of the major determinants. Using three rounds of NSSO data namely 50th round (1993–94), 61st round (2004–05), 68th round (2011–12) of Employment and Unemployment Surveys and the PLFS (2017–18) data, our analysis (across factors) have shown the existence of U-shaped relationship between FLFPR and education, however it shifts downwards with time. The relationship between FLFPR and MPCE deciles is not U-shaped but negative. Women from higher income class are more likely of being graduates thus increasing their probability of joining the labour force; even then a lower labour force participation of women in the upper deciles show the dominance of Income effect over education. It is significant that FLFPR declines with time irrespective of income and education. This indicates existence of factors other than supply side for explaining the problem of falling FLFPR. Particularly, one needs to focus on demand side problems and social-institutional factors inhibiting women from joining the labour force.

Keywords: Female Labour Force Participation Rate; Labour Market; U-Hypothesis; Indian Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s41027-022-00362-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:ijlaec:v:65:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s41027-022-00362-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/41027

DOI: 10.1007/s41027-022-00362-0

Access Statistics for this article

The Indian Journal of Labour Economics is currently edited by Alakh Sharma

More articles in The Indian Journal of Labour Economics from Springer, The Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().