Soil endowments, female labor force participation and the demographic deficit of women in India

Eliana Carranza

No 5974, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Differences in relative female employment by soil texture are used to explain the heterogeneous deficit of female children across districts within India. Soil texture varies exogenously and determines the depth of land tillage. Deep tillage, possible in loamy but not in clayey soil textures, reduces the demand for labor in agricultural tasks traditionally performed by women. Girls have a lower economic value where female labor opportunities are fewer. Consistently, higher relative female employment in agriculture improves the ratio of female to male children in districts that have a smaller fraction of loamy relative to clayey soils.

Keywords: Population Policies; Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems; Labor Markets; Crops and Crop Management Systems; Common Property Resource Development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-02-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dem, nep-dev and nep-hme
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSC ... ered/PDF/WPS5974.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Soil Endowments, Female Labor Force Participation, and the Demographic Deficit of Women in India (2014)
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:wbk:wbrwps:5974

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().