Despite economic growth, fertility reductions, and increases in female educational attainment, overall female labor force participation in India declined from 35 percent to 27 percent between 1999 and 2012. I examine the degree to which this puzzling decline can be attributed to an increase in earnings of married males. I first show that between 1999 and 2012, districts that experience a relati...

What Explains the Stagnation of Female Labor Force Participation in Urban India? We study the surprisingly low level and stagnation of female labor force participation rates in urban India between 1987 and 2009. Despite rising growth, fertility decline, and rising wages and education levels, women’s labor force participation stagnated at around 18%. Using five large cross-sectional micro survey...

The McElroy-Horney Nash-bargaining model of family demand behavior relaxes the restriction that nonearned income of husband and wife has the identical effect on family labor supply and commodity demands. This restriction of the neoclassical model offamily behavior is tested for the determination of husband and wife labor supply andfertility based on the 1981 Socioeconomic Survey of Thailand. Th...

Female Labour Supply, Human Capital and Welfare Reform We consider the impact of tax credits and income support programs on female education choice, employment, hours and human capital accumulation over the life-cycle. We analyze both the short run incentive effects and the longer run implications of such programs. By allowing for risk aversion and savings, we quantify the insurance value of al...

Rising rates of maternal employment among current and former welfare recipients have increased the use of non-parental child care. Little empirical work examines the relationship between women’s labor supply and the geographic supply of child care. We combine census data with child care provider information for the state of Maryland to explore the relationship between female labor supply and th...