PhD thesis: Essays on labour and family economics
PhD thesis: Essays on labour and family economics
Essay 1: Can partial childcare change mothers' work? Labour supply and household adjustments (Job Market Paper)
This paper examines how access to part-day kindergarten affects household labour allocation in Indonesia, where female labour force participation is low and families rely heavily on informal care. Exploiting age-based eligibility cutoffs in an instrumental variable design, I find that kindergarten enrolment increases mothers’ labour force participation and employment by about 13 percentage points and raises weekly hours worked by roughly 5 percent, with larger gains among less-educated, rural, and low-income women. These gains hold even in households with kin caregivers, with no evidence of crowding out of informal care. Access also increases school enrolment and reduces labour among older siblings—especially girls—and raises non-food household consumption. Improvements in job quality remain minimal, likely constrained by the short duration of care and rigid labour markets. Part-day childcare meaningfully relaxes mothers’ time constraints and increases their work, but the short programme limits deeper shifts in job quality and does little to alter women’s bargaining power within the household.
Essay 2: Does social assistance disincentivise employment, job formality, and mobility? (2023) Labour Economics, 84, 102398. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2023.102398
Large-scale unconditional cash transfers are widely used to stabilise household welfare during economic shocks, yet their effects on labour-market behaviour remain contested. This study examines Indonesia’s national unconditional cash transfer programmes implemented during periods of macroeconomic stress, exploiting variation across two phases with distinct targeting designs. BLT 2005 relied on a simple proxy-means test, while BLT 2008/BLSM 2013 incorporated richer welfare information, including employment characteristics. Using retrospective employment histories from the Indonesia Family Life Survey, a fourteen-year individual panel is constructed and analysed using a generalised difference-in-differences design combined with propensity-score matching and individual fixed effects. The results indicate modest but design-sensitive responses. The later programmes are associated with small declines in employment and sharper reductions in formal-sector participation, whereas BLT 2005 is linked to a delayed increase in formality. The findings highlight how targeting rules and perceived eligibility can shape labour-market adjustments, particularly along the formality margin, even when transfers are temporary.
Essay 3: More kids, more conflict? Family size and domestic violence in a high-fertility setting (2025) Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 12(3), e70039. https://doi.org/10.1002/app5.70039
Family size shapes economic constraints and intra-household bargaining positions in ways that can affect intimate partner violence (IPV). Using same-sex sibling composition as an instrument for family size, this study estimates the causal effect of family size on IPV in Samoa. An additional dependent child increases the likelihood that a woman experiences IPV, with particularly strong effects for physical and sexual violence. The estimates are consistent with partial non-cooperative household models in which higher childcare demands reduce women’s fallback options relative to in-marriage utility, relaxing participation constraints and permitting higher levels of violence. Evidence on mechanisms shows that larger families increase overcrowding, reduce female labour force participation, limit access to external support, and lower women’s control over earnings, healthcare, and contraception. Women in larger families also display greater acceptance of IPV alongside higher stress-related household conflict. Together, these results provide causal evidence that family size heightens IPV risk through economic pressure, bargaining dynamics, and gender norms in high-fertility settings.
Working papers
Can partial childcare change mothers’ work? Labour supply and household adjustments
Shadows beyond the home: Safety and women’s economic and social participation in Indonesia (with R. Siregar)
Peer-reviewed articles
[1] Low-cost low-touch information provision, parental involvement, and student learning outcomes: Evidence from a government-implemented intervention in Indonesia. Journal of Development Studies, forthcoming (with A. Kurniawan, S. Maulana, N. Rarasati, S. Revina, D. Suryadarma, and F. A. Tresnatri).
[2] More kids, more conflict? Family size and domestic violence in a high-fertility setting. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 12(3), e70039 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1002/app5.70039
[3] Maternal education and children’s well-being: Evidence from four Pacific countries. Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, 12(3), e70044 (2025) (with J. Marshan). https://doi.org/10.1002/app5.70044
[4] Minimum wage and educational pathways in Indonesia: General or vocational tracks? Asian Development Review, 41(02), 107-135 (2024) (with N. Merdikawati, S.C. Saxena, A.M. Tjahjadi). https://doi.org/10.1142/S0116110524400110
[5] Does social assistance disincentivise employment, job formality, and mobility? Labour Economics, 84, 102398 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.labeco.2023.102398
[6] From school to work: Does vocational education improve labour market outcomes? An empirical analysis of Indonesia. Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking, 25(3), 471-492 (2022). https://doi.org/10.21098/bemp.v25i3.1315
[7] Scarred for life: Lasting consequences of unemployment and informal self-employment. Economic Analysis and Policy, 70, 206-219 (2021) (with A.C. Kusuma, S.C. Saxena). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eap.2021.02.009
[8] Determinants of school enrolment in Indonesia: The role of minimum wage. Bulletin of Monetary Economics and Banking, 24(2), 181-204 (2021). https://doi.org/10.21098/bemp.v24i2.1484