COVID-19, Income Shocks, and Women’s Employment in India

Ishaan Bansal and Kanika Mahajan

Feminist Economics, 2023, vol. 29, issue 4, 285-317

Abstract: Existing evidence shows that the COVID-19 pandemic led to larger employment losses for working women in India. This article examines the heterogeneity that underlies these trends by studying the impact of income shocks due to the COVID-19 induced national lockdown (April–May 2020) on women’s employment. Using individual-level panel data and a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits the imposition of the lockdown and accounts for seasonal employment trends, the study finds that women in households facing a hundred percent reduction in men’s income during the lockdown were 1.57 pp (27 percent) more likely to take up work after restrictions eased (June–August 2020). These results are predominant in poorer and less educated households. However, these positive employment trends are largely transitory as the effect on women’s employment reduces to 13 percent in these households during September–December 2020. These findings underscore the use of women’s labor as insurance during low-income periods by poorer households.HIGHLIGHTSWomen’s labor acts as insurance during periods of men’s income loss.The increase in labor market participation is only observed for married women.Rural women participate in less-secure casual agricultural labor.Urban women access more secure fixed-wage work and self-employment.Increase in women’s labor force participation is mostly transitory.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13545701.2023.2250797 (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:femeco:v:29:y:2023:i:4:p:285-317

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RFEC20

DOI: 10.1080/13545701.2023.2250797

Access Statistics for this article

Feminist Economics is currently edited by Diana Strassmann

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