Human Development in India - NCAER

40 human development in indiasmall or large business, and if so, the names of the householdmembers who participated and the days and hours of workin the past year. Interviewers were specially trained to askabout the participation of women and children as well asadult men in each of these activities. This combinationof information from different streams of activity draws aholistic picture of the work undertaken by all individuals inthe household in the preceding year.The IHDS line of questioning provides results thatare broadly similar, although not identical, to the workparticipation rates given by the ‘usual status’ employmentquestions used by the NSS or Census. The most importantexception is that the IHDS questions on caring for livestockyield higher rates of rural female labour force participation.A second definitional difference is how the IHDS andNSS exclude work undertaken for fewer than thirty days.Under the IHDS definition, those working two hours perday would have to work 120 days in a year to be consideredemployed, while those working four hours per day wouldneed to work sixty days. This definitional difference leadsto a slight reduction in work participation rates using theIHDS definition. 1WORK FORCE PARTICIPATIONPeople are considered working if they were engaged for atleast 240 hours during the preceding year in one or moregainful activities. Those working in household farms orbusinesses, or for a wage or salary are considered as workers.Additionally, persons who usually take care of animalsare counted as workers. Tables A.4.1a and A.4.1b presentthese employment rates for different population groupsand states.The most striking differences in employment are thoseby age and sex (see Figure 4.1).For both men and women, employment rates increasewith age in the early part of the life cycle, although theyincrease somewhat later in urban areas, where an increasingnumber of adolescents stay in school. After age sixty employmentrates decline for all groups, with the largest declinefor urban men, who often face compulsory retirement fromformal sector jobs between the ages of fifty-five and sixty.Nevertheless, work participation rates between ages sixty tosixty-four are high, at nearly 77 per cent among rural men, atheme explored in more detail in Chapter 9. Child labour isdiscussed in greater detail in Chapter 8.The striking difference between men and women is alsoevident in Figure 4.1. Most males work, the exception beingboys and young men in school, or just entering the labourFigure 4.1Source: IHDS 2004–5 data.Employment Rates by Age for Men and Womenforce, and the elderly, who are slowly withdrawing fromthe labour force. For men, the important difference amongsocial groups and regions depends on their ability to findyear-round work, as discussed in the following section. Forwomen, work participation varies by their social backgroundand place of residence, with urban women being the leastlikely to participate in the work force.Women’s labour force participation is concentrated atthe lower end of the socioeconomic distribution (see TableA.4.1a). Women from households in the bottom incomequintile are more likely to work than women higher up theincome scale. Adivasi women are more likely to work thanforward caste or other minority religion women, with Dalitand OBC women falling in the middle. Women in metrocities are the least likely to work, while women living inthe least developed villages are the most likely to work. Someof these differences are quite large: for example, only 15per cent of women in metro cities are employed, comparedwith 62 per cent in the least developed villages.Even women’s education has a generally negative associationwith work participation rates despite the incentivesprovided by higher earnings for the well educated. Womenwho have finished the 10th standard are less likely to beemployed than illiterate women. The negative effect of lowto moderate levels of education for women can be seen evenwhen other family income is controlled (see Box 4.1).State differences in women’s work participation ratespresented in Table A.4.1b are also interesting. Unlike house-1For males, the IHDS work participation rates are 53.9 and 48.2 in rural and urban areas, respectively, compared with NSS rates of 54.6 and 54.9,respectively. For females, IHDS rates are 38.4 and 14.1 in rural and urban areas, respectively, compared with NSS rates of 32.6 and 16.7 (NSSO 2005a).For those who are employed for cash remuneration (that is, wage or salary), the daily income measured by the IHDS is about Rs 92 per day compared toRs 96 per day as measured by the NSS.