Working Papers

What Works for Her?: How Work-from-Home Digital Jobs Affect Female Labor Force Participation (with Lisa Ho, MIT)

Women labor force participation in urban India remains particularly low at 23% with social norms constraining women’s paid work. We design job opportunities for women that comply with existing social norms through digital smartphone-based tasks that can be flexible, part-time and from or near home. Through a six-armed randomized experiment in Mumbai with 3,500 married women, we provide some of the first experimental evidence to show how providing paid work-from-home jobs can increase female labor force participation. Even when the job is offered close to home within the same community, in women-only centers where children are permitted and there is minimal safety or travel cost involved, work-from-home is twice as preferred as working from local centers. Further, we find that the women who work-from-home have lower productivity, possibly due to multitasking. We test for the mechanisms behind the strong preference to work from home, including observability of the woman’s work status, convenience, multi-tasking, and permissions to leave the house for work. The experiment also demonstrates that wage levels do not affect job take-up rates for women, especially when the job is at home, even when the wages are increased five-fold. Finally, we observe how providing social norm-compliant employment to women may affect their take-up of any type of job in the future, and the effects of this employment on women’s overall agency, mental health, dignity, and social norms. 

Effect of Slum Redevelopment on Child Health Outcomes: Evidence from Mumbai 

[Draft]

Abstract: As the population of urban poor living in slums increases, governments are trying to relocate people into government-provided free housing. Slum redevelopment affects every part of a household’s livelihood, but most importantly the health and wellbeing of younger generations. This paper investigates the effect of slum redevelopment schemes on child stunting levels. Data was collected in forty-one buildings under the slum-redevelopment program in Mumbai. The study demonstrates through a fixed effect regression analysis that an additional year of living in the building is associated with an increase in the height-for-age Z-score by 0.124 standard deviations. Possible explanations include an improvement in the overall hygienic environment, sanitation conditions, indoor air pollution, and access to health and water facilities. However, anecdotal evidence suggests that water contamination, loss of livelihood and increased expenses could worsen health outcomes for residents. This study prompts more research on the health effects of slum redevelopment projects, which are becoming increasingly common in the rapidly urbanizing developing world. 

Publications

Shrinivas, A., Jalota, S., Mahajan, A., & Miller, G. (2023). The Importance of Wage Loss in the Financial Burden of Illness: Longitudinal Evidence from India. Social Science & Medicine, 317. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115583

Abstract: A key aim of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is to protect individuals and households against the financial risk of illness. Large-scale health insurance expansions are therefore a central focus of the UHC agenda. Importantly, however, health insurance does not protect against a key dimension of financial risk associated with illness: forgone wage income (due to short-term disability). In this paper, we quantify the economic burden of illness in India attributable – separately – to wage loss and to medical care spending, as well as differences in them across the socio-economic distribution. Using data from two Indian longitudinal household surveys, we find that wage loss accounts for more than 80% of the total economic burden of illness among the poorest households, but only about 20% of the economic burden of illness among the most affluent. Overall, we find that wage loss accounts for a substantial share of the total economic burden of illness in India – and disproportionately so among the poorest households.

Works in Progress

Effect of COVID-19 on Women's livelihoods, health, and dignity outcomes in slums (with Sakshi Shah)

[Status: Data collection completed]

Effect of Slum Redevelopment on Women and Child Health outcomes 

[Status: Design stage]