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Recent Dynamics of Women Labour Force Participation in India

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Abstract

Using household-level data from Employment–Unemployment Survey (EUS) and Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) rounds for India between 2012 and 2019, our paper suggests that better economic conditions of households continued to be associated with higher instances of exit from the labour market for both men and women during the last decade, while, this effect was stronger for women. Enrolment in higher education during the survey rounds was associated with higher instances of exit for women from households with better economic conditions, a result not found to be significant for men. In the presence of employment benefits, the likelihood was reduced significantly for women.

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Fig. 1

Source: World Development Indicators, World Bank

Fig. 2

Source: World Development Indicators, World Bank

Fig. 3

Source: CEIC, Employment Unemployment Survey for 2011–12, Periodic Labour Force Survey for 2017–18 and 2018–19. Note: Unemployment is measured as per usual principal and subsidiary status (UPSS)

Fig. 4

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Notes

  1. India’s female labour force participation rate was 21 per cent between 2016 and 2019, compared to 44 per cent for the middle-income countries (World Bank).

  2. For a comparison and contrast between EUS and PLFS, see Jajoria and Jatav (2020).

  3. 1 Lakh = 100 Thousands.

  4. A data challenge for the study is that current weekly status can often be considered to be an indicator of transitory employment or unemployment as opposed to the usual status, which tracks the employment status over a much longer time horizon. Therefore, it may be quite possible that a respondent who is identified as ‘out of labour force’ by the current weekly status is out of the labour force only for a temporary period, and he/she may come back to the labour force during the later period. From CWS we remove these respondents under codes 62, 72 and 82, who self-declare themselves as non-permanent exits from the labour force, from the dataset to address the issue of any misidentification of respondents being ‘out of labour force’ based on current weekly status. We consider the remaining respondents as being out of labour force, based on their responses. Based on the survey data, there is no significant way that we can assess their future behaviour, Addressing these issues related to survey design and survey responses is beyond the scope of this research.

  5. For past attainment, it includes illiterates.

  6. NIC: National Industrial Classification; NCO: National Occupational Classification.

  7. When a respondent reports to have all of the following: PF/ pension, gratuity, health care and maternity benefits. This is recorded as Code 7 in the survey.

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Acknowledgements

The paper was presented during 63rd Annual Conference of the Indian Society of Labour Economics (ISLE) organised by the Centre for Development Studies and Department of Economics, Rajiv Gandhi University, Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India. The authors are grateful for the comments received from the referee and participants which improved the paper substantially.

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  1. Department of Economic and Policy Research, Reserve Bank of India, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

    Sadhan Kumar Chattopadhyay, Siddhartha Nath & Sreerupa Sengupta

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Chattopadhyay, S.K., Nath, S. & Sengupta, S. Recent Dynamics of Women Labour Force Participation in India. Ind. J. Labour Econ. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41027-023-00468-z

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