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Highlights • The study examines the role of co-residing family members in married women's decision to take up non-farm work. • Living in a joint family lowers women's non-farm employment in rural India by around 12% points. • Less autonomy rather than higher family income or elderly care is the main obstacle to join non-farm work. • Adverse impact is higher for women with less education, from higher social status and from Northern India. • Accessibility to jobs and availability of childcare reduce the adverse impact of joint family on women's work. Abstract This paper investigates if residing in a joint family affects non-farm employment for married women in rural India. Our estimates based on a longitudinal survey of over 27,000 women conducted in 2005 and 2012, and using the conditional logistic regression and instrumental variable approach suggest that living in a joint family lowers married women's participation non-farm work by around 12% points. The adverse impact is higher for younger women, for those from families with higher social status, and for those residing in Northern India. We present evidence to suggest that women with higher education are not constrained from cultural and traditional norms since education raises women's decision-making power in a joint family. An increased education level is likely to raise women's earning capacity as well as the quality of jobs which may help in lowering family pressure against work. Public policies that encourage higher education, improve job accessibility along with affordable childcare, will raise non-farm employment, which has increasingly been the main source of new jobs, for women living in a rural India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary It is well known that consumption patterns change with income. Relative price changes would therefore affect rich and poor consumers differently. Yet, the standard price indices are not income-specific, and hence, they cannot account for such differences. In this paper, we study consumption inequality in India, while fully allowing for non-homotheticity. We show that the relative price changes during most of the period from 1993 to 2012 were pro-poor, in the sense that they favored the poor relative to the rich. As a result, we also find that conventional measures significantly overstate the rise in real consumption inequality during this period. The main lesson from our study is the importance of accounting for non-homotheticity when measuring inequality. The price index literature has, as of yet, paid relatively little attention to this. In our application, however, it turns out that the allowance for non-homotheticity is quantitatively much more important than much discussed adjustments, such as those for substitution in consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Income diversification continues to be a key strategy for poor rural households, including those that are progressively developing and those operating under increasing distress. The ability of a household to diversify has been shown to depend upon its demographic and economic characteristics and its physical and social context. This paper considers the effects of intra-village social networks on household income diversification in one of the poorest and most ethnically diverse areas of the Indian state of Kerala. Using techniques adapted from spatial econometrics, we find that social connections within a village magnify the impacts of household characteristics such as education and number of adults by a factor of 3.6 times. Models with alternative measures of network centrality (degree and eigenvector) indicate that the number of network connections that a household has is more important than the centrality of those connections. Finally, we use social contact information to calculate assortative mixing based on caste. The results suggest social stratification in these villages, with higher levels of stratification associated with lower levels of income diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Trade openness has ambiguous implications for son preference in a traditional society. While it can work in favor of girls by improving relative female wages or average household income, it can worsen the relative preference for girls by changing marriage payments. This paper exploits an exogenous policy shock in India to study the impact of trade openness on son preference, as reflected in the sex-ratio. Survival chances of girls worsened in regions experiencing high trade openness, particularly for Hindus belonging to traditionally higher castes. I argue that Dowry inflation is a possible channel through which trade liberalization affected sex-ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] This paper examines returns to education in India for consumption and wages. [•] The returns appear high at the individual level for both men and women. [•] Yet comparing across cohorts the returns are low for men and zero for women. [•] The results are robust to measurement error and school quality. [•] There are higher returns in the regular wage market but that employs few people. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper studies the relationship between mothers’ employment and children’s schooling in India. Using the second National Family Health Survey, the results of a multilevel probit model show that the correlation between mothers’ employment and their children’s schooling is negative. Women in poorer households are more likely to work but, given the negative correlation, their additional income does not seem sufficient to enable children’s school attendance. A sensitivity analysis on wealth deciles shows that this negative relationship disappears in urban areas and becomes weaker in rural areas at the top wealth deciles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The paper estimates the effects of the 2008–09 trade contraction on employment in India and South Africa, using social accounting matrices (SAMs) in a Leontief multiplier model. Employment results are presented at aggregate and industry levels and examine gender and skills biases. The most notable finding is that India and South Africa experienced substantial employment declines as a result of trade contraction with the European Union and the United States. A large share of these declines occurred in the non-tradable sector and resulted from income-induced effects, illustrating how a shock originating in the tradable goods sector had strong ripple effects throughout these economies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: This paper looks at the human health impacts from urban air pollution in India. Such pollution is especially harmful to poor people, so the co-benefits from global climate change policies in terms of reduced local air pollution can have positive equity impacts. Health impacts (mortality and morbidity) of PM10 pollution are quantified for different socio-economic groups in Delhi. The spatial PM10 concentration levels are overlaid with spatial socio-economic data. Improvement in air quality would result in bigger health benefits for the poor. Most measures that reduce PM10 pollutants also reduce CO2 emissions while simultaneously imposing more costs on the better-off. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: In this paper, we test whether economic growth decreases child labor by bringing together data from the National Sample Survey of India and state-level macrodata to estimate a bivariate probit model of schooling and labor. Our results lead us to conclude that contrary to popular wisdom, growth actually increases rather than decreases child labor because it increases the demand for child workers. The level of state NDP, village wages, and household incomes are seen as the conduits through which growth influences the supply side of the child labor market. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

• I compare the process of structural transformation in both national data and household panel data in India. • The national data provides evidence that India is in the midst of structural transformation. • Household data tells a similar story, though rural households lag behind in key indicators. • The results have implications for using stylized facts to set policy agenda. This paper compares national-level data from India with 40 years of household panel data from rural India to track sectoral changes in employment and income as well as examine the hypothesis of induced innovation in agricultural production. In the national data, India appears to be in the midst of a structural transformation. The share of agriculture in GDP and employment has shrunk while agricultural output continues to grow. This productivity growth appears to adhere to the induced innovation hypothesis, as productivity per hectare has increased more rapidly than productivity per worker. Many of the same patterns exist in the household data. Tracking households across time, I observe agricultural output has increased, despite more households engaging in off-farm labor. Household agricultural production is highly specialized and has increased its reliance on improved inputs. However, while agricultural income has grown, industrial and service income has remained stagnant, and the relative income of these households has declined in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]