The impact of digital development on non-agricultural employment of rural women: evidence from the broadband China strategy

Yiying Sun and Senlin Li

Applied Economics, 2025, vol. 57, issue 18, 2224-2240

Abstract: In developing countries, the employment of rural women is a crucial component of livelihood issues, with implications for sustainable social development, poverty alleviation, and the realization of gender equality. This study employs a quasi-natural experiment approach based on the Broadband China strategic pilot project. Through constructing a multi-temporal differences-in-differences empirical model, it analyzes the impact of digital development on non-agricultural employment of rural women in China, along with the underlying mechanisms. Empirical results indicate a significant positive effect of digital development on non-agricultural employment for rural women. This impact is more pronounced among younger, highly educated, married, parous, and those residing in main grain-producing regions. Mechanism analysis reveals that, on the labour supply side, digital development enhances the probability of rural women participating in non-agricultural employment by improving their labour force quality. On the labour demand side, digital development fosters the development of emerging industries and improves the employment environment, thereby providing more opportunities for rural women to engage in non-agricultural employment. Based on these findings, this study offers policy implications for advancing digital infrastructure construction and digital economic development in rural China, addressing women’s employment challenges, and narrowing gender employment gaps.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/00036846.2024.2322584 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:applec:v:57:y:2025:i:18:p:2224-2240

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEC20

DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2024.2322584

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().