Employer and Employee Preferences for Worker Benefits: Evidence from a Matched Employer-Employee Survey in Bangladesh

Krishna B. Kumar, Minhaj Mahmud, Shanthi Nataraj and Yoonyoung Cho

Journal of Development Studies, 2025, vol. 61, issue 6, 970-988

Abstract: We study the working conditions of low-skilled workers in a developing country, Bangladesh, to shed light on the conditions workers value and employers may be willing to provide. Using a carefully designed choice experiment embedded in a unique survey of employers and employees, we elicit preferences for compensation, leave and termination policies, working hours, overtime pay, and accident compensation. Workers value termination notice and accident compensation, and employers are not averse to providing them. However, workers find long working hours without overtime compensation to be highly undesirable, whereas many employers are unwilling to provide shorter hours or overtime pay unless they face the threat of fines or are offered substantial incentives. Our findings suggest that encouraging the provision of termination notice and accident compensation may be relatively easy, but that increasing compliance with legal limits on working hours and overtime compensation is likely to require increased enforcement or substantial incentives.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2025.2451868

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