ANNOUNCEMENTS
With India running short of time for reaping its demographic dividend, its abysmally female labor force participation rate, which has consistently declined from 42% in 1993-94 to 19% in 2018-19, poses a paradox to policymakers. In this milieu, there has been growing recognition worldwide of the significant role of unpaid care work as a crucial constraint for women to participate in paid employment, owing to the disproportionate burden of this work shouldered by them. This certainly appears to be the case for India, with Indian women spending a considerably higher amount of time on unpaid care work, relative to men, as per the Time Use Survey of 2019. The present study aims to empirically estimate the impact of unpaid care work on participation in paid production activities, and accordingly capture how much of a burden is the unpaid care work burden for Indian women. Unit-level data from the recently administered country-wide Time Use Survey of 2019 will be utilized to estimate probabilities for said participation using a Sample Selection model. The author finds a negative impact of unpaid care work on the time spent in SNA production activities, with women seemingly bearing the brunt of this impact. This is corroborated using Propensity Score Matching and Oaxaca decomposition analysis which show significant effects of gender discrimination in the gap between male and female care work time. Policies to address women’s care burden and expand their labor market opportunities to the level enjoyed by men are briefly discussed.
Key Words: Unpaid care work, Time Use Survey 2019, NSO, Women’s economic participation, SNA & non-SNA activities, Sample selection, Propensity score matching, Oaxaca decomposition, Policy recommendations.
