Children who grow up in poverty are more likely to experience poverty in their adult lives, manifesting intergenerational poverty traps. Studies with long-term panel data show that the poverty status of households in their childhood is associated with their human capital, occupational choice, income, as well as their age of marriage, fertility, and migration. While…
Measuring the Long-Term Impact of Reducing Childhood Poverty
Female Entrepreneurship and Professional Networks
Despite being the only region in the world where there are more female entrepreneurs than men, the vast majority of female-owned businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa are microenterprises and women’s businesses earn 34% lower profits than male-owned ones. Identifying the constraints faced by female entrepreneurs is vital for fostering economic growth. Recent studies have shown that…
Digitising Historical Plant Level Panel Data on Labour Outcomes
This project seeks to digitise historical plant–level data on labour outcomes from India. In addition to monthly, plant–level data on various labour outcomes, these data contain unique plant identifiers, which can be combined with existing cross–section surveys of Indian manufacturing plants to obtain new panel data on Indian manufacturing plants for the 1980s and 1990s….
Strength in Numbers
India’s female labour force participation (FLFP) is abnormally low at 20% and further decreasing. While social norms against women working might be at play, these do not explain the variation in FLFP noticed across nearby villages which are culturally similar. I hypothesize that women’s labour supply decisions depend on the labour supply decisions of other…
Dodging Promotions
Gender disparities in leadership roles and wages persist globally, with underrepresentation of women in higher positions being a significant factor. While both supply and demand-side factors contribute to this imbalance, the role of preferences for flexibility remains understudied. This research aims to investigate whether the preference for flexibility contributes to the gender gap in promotions…
Peripartum Timing, Agricultural Productivity, Food Security, and Child Health in Africa
The majority of the population in LICs depend on rain–fed agriculture for livelihoods, which means the timing of most activities is dependent on the rainfall calendar and pattern. This has obvious implications on the timing of other events that reduce labour or make it hard to carry out heavy agricultural workloads. One such event is…
Female Wage Labour and Fertility
While growth has taken off in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) in recent decades, the structural transformation of its economies is still lagging far behind that observed in other previously low-and-middle-income regions across the world. At the same time, SSA is undergoing a unique fertility transition: the decline in the number of children born per woman is…
Paternalistic Discrimination
Women in South Asia are often excluded from the labour market, reducing their financial autonomy, and negatively impacting their physical and mental wellbeing (Verick, 2014; Field et al., 2021). Large government interventions have failed to close the gender employment and wage gaps for over two decades (NIPORT 2007–2017, BBS 2018). This shows that education and…
Together to Work? Role of Travel Buddies on Women’s Employment and Mobility
The labour market participation rate for women in India is significantly low, with only 25 women for every 100 men being engaged in the workforce. This striking disparity is far below the global average of 66.7 women for every 100 men. Existing data and observations suggest that societal norms and concerns about safety restrict many…
Education and Labour Market Dynamics in a Period of Rapid Education Expansion:
Recognizing the need for policies that address poverty and inequality and build social cohesion, the Ghanaian government rolled out free compulsory primary education in 1996 and free senior high school provision in 2017. With the first cohorts exposed to the free education policies now reaching prime adulthood, our project aims to take stock of how…