Demographic Shocks and Women’s Labor Market Participation: Evidence from the 1918 Influenza Pandemic in India

Journal article

How did the 1918 influenza pandemic affect female labor force participation in India over the short run and the medium run? We use an event-study approach at the district level and four waves of decadal census data in order to answer this question. We find that districts most adversely affected by influenza mortality saw a temporary increase in female labor force participation in 1921, an increase that was concentrated in the service sector. We find suggestive evidence that distress labor supply by widows and rising wages help account for this result

Authors: Fenske, J; Gupta, B; Yuan, S

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Journal: The Journal of Economic History
• Volume: 82
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 875-912
• Publication date: 2022-08-17
• DOI: 10.1017/s0022050722000304
• EISSN: 1471-6372
• ISSN: 0022-0507
• Language: English
• Keywords: Demography; Labour economics; Finance; Population; Pandemic; Economics; Medicine; Affect (linguistics); Order (exchange); Demographic economics; Census; Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19); Distress; Influenza pandemic; Psychology; Sociology