Violence and Female Labor Supply

38 Pages Posted: 29 Oct 2018

See all articles by Zahra Siddique

Zahra Siddique

University of Reading; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Abstract

This paper explores whether fear and safety concerns have an impact on behavior such as female labor supply in a developing country context. The effect of media reported physical and sexual assaults on urban women's labor force participation in India is investigated by combining nationally representative cross-sectional microeconomic surveys carried out between 2009 and 2012 with a novel geographically referenced data source on media reports of assaults. I find that a σ increase in lagged sexual assault reports within one's own district reduces the probability that a woman is employed outside her home by 0.44 percentage points (or 3.6% of the sample average). I find this effect despite ruling out several sources of unobserved heterogeneity. This effect is also robust to a number of sensitivity checks. Consistent with a model in which women make investments to overcome fear in the presence of economic incentives, I find that the effect of local violence on labor supply is weaker among women from poorer households. I also find this effect to be weaker among high caste Hindu women, but strong among Muslim women.

Keywords: economics of gender, labor supply

JEL Classification: J16, J22

Suggested Citation

Siddique, Zahra, Violence and Female Labor Supply. IZA Discussion Paper No. 11874, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3273713 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3273713

Zahra Siddique (Contact Author)

University of Reading ( email )

Whiteknights
Reading, Berkshire RG6 6AH
United Kingdom

IZA Institute of Labor Economics ( email )

Schaumburg Lippe Str. 5-9
Bonn, 53113
Germany

HOME PAGE: http://www.iza.org/profile?key=4394

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