Female Work Participation in India: The Heterogeneous Effect of Fertility

The entrance of women in the workplace has generated much interest in the relationship between female work participation and fertility. Increases in women’s participation in the workforce in historical and contemporary times have been attributed, among other things, to declining fertility rates. Evidence on significant contribution of rising female labor supply to economic growth as fertility declines is robust. Empirical evidence supports the theoretical “inverse relation” premise and reveals a negative association between fertility and female work participation. In India, declining levels of fertility have, however, not been accompanied by higher rates of female work participation. Considering its level of income, India, by far, has one of the lowest rates of female work participation in the world. The purpose of this analysis is, therefore, to examine the work-fertility relation across a cross-section of districts in India which remains under-researched with prior empirical studies predominantly conducted at the micro-level. The focus is on interpreting heterogeneity in the aggregate work-fertility relation after considering endogeneity between the two factors as well as systemic non-random geographic interdependencies that characterize social and health outcomes such as fertility and female work participation. Contraceptive prevalence rate (CPR) is employed to instrument fertility in a spatial autoregressive model with autoregressive disturbances. Results indicate a higher degree of mother-worker role conflict in urban India and hold implications for health and economic planning in developing countries experiencing a persisting, and developed countries witnessing a reemergence of incompatibility between mothering and working.