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1. Tracking workers across generations – a cohort-based analysis

Author:
Rosa Abraham
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Alongside rapid economic growth, India also saw steady de-agrarianisation of its economy in terms of contribution to GDP. In terms of employment, however, the movement out of agriculture was slower, and when they did exit, it was often a withdrawal from the workforce entirely. In general, more of the workforce are in salaried employment, however, these have filtered differently by gender, caste and religion. While cross-sectional data gives us a sense of how these structural changes affect workers at any given point in time, it cannot tell us how these play out for workers over their lifetime as well as how different generations or cohorts of workers have been affected. Here, we use seven rounds of nationally representative official data to construct cohorts who are tracked over these periods to observe employment participation and the patterns over time. We find that younger generations of women systematically less likely to be in paid employment whereas for men, after a certain age, generations look similar in terms of employment rate. Similarly, when examined from the perspective of cohorts, we find that access to salaried employment has changed by gender and caste, and increase in earnings over time over their lifecycle has slowed for certain groups.
Topic:
Women, Employment, Economic Growth, and Economic Mobility
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

2. What did they say? Respondent identity, question framing and the measurement of employment

Author:
Rosa Abraham, Nishat Anjum, Rahul Lahoti, and Hema Swaminathan
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
In developing countries, a precise approach to measuring women’s employment remains elusive. Emerging evidence underscores the pivotal role of survey methodology, encompassing respondent selection and question framing, in shaping the assessment of women’s employment. Drawing from two labor market experiments in rural India, this study offers insights on the influence of survey design on the measurement of women’s employment. The first experiment contrasts self-reported women’s and men’s employment figures with proxy-reported data from spouses. Women’s self-reported workforce participation surpasses proxy-reported estimates by six percentage points, while men’s estimates exhibit negligible differences. There are significant differences in the type of employment activities reported by self and proxy for both women and men. These divergences emanate from asymmetric measurement errors, stemming from gender-based norm disparities between spouses, and divergent interpretations of employment. Additionally, information asymmetry between spouses concerning women’s marginal activities and disparities in spousal characteristics contribute to these self-proxy differences. The second experiment investigates if framing of questions and recall period has an impact on reporting of labor market outcomes. We find that employing multiple questions to capture weekly employment status yields a 10-percentage-point increase in reported women’s workforce participation, but men’s participation rate decreases by six percentage points. Furthermore, when a distinct employment query is directed at each day of the preceding week as opposed to a single query for the entire week, reported women’s workforce participation increases by seven percentage points, and men’s by four percentage points.
Topic:
Development, Employment, Survey, Methods, and Gender
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

3. Jobless growth and structural transformation: Some theoretical considerations and empirical evidence from India

Author:
Zico Dasgupta and Amit Basole
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The decoupling of output growth and employment growth, known popularly as “jobless growth” has been a problem plaguing many countries. Using cross-country data, we show that India has underperformed significantly on job creation compared to the average developing country with lower than average employment elasticities at both the aggregate level and for the non-agricultural sector. Strikingly, we find a one-for-one relationship between output growth and productivity growth in India’s non-agricultural sector, i.e. a Kaldor-Verdoorn coefficient of one. Despite this joblessness of growth, the Indian economy has experienced some structural transformation with the share of the non-agricultural sector and the share of regular wage employment rising at the expense of agriculture and self-employment. We develop a theoretical model which clarifies the relative roles of labour demand and labour supply in determining the output-employment relationship. In this model, the Indian case of some structural transformation even with jobless growth emerges as one case among four possible cases (growth with or without jobs / structural change or no structural change). We conclude with some policy implications.
Topic:
Employment, Economic Growth, Gender, Structural Transformation, and Jobless Growth
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

4. Telephone surveys for data collection – some reflections

Author:
Rosa Abraham and Mridhula Mohan
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Phone-based surveys have emerged as important survey tool with their use increasing particularly during the pandemic-induced lockdowns. However, the use of phone-based surveys comes with concerns around sampling and reporting – the former refers to issues in terms of reaching the intended respondents and adequate representation of different groups while the latter relates to the quality of data collected. Based on a phone-survey of a pre-existing cross-section of households in Karnataka and Rajasthan conducted during the lockdowns of 2020, this paper looks at how sampling and reporting issues play out especially with regard to speaking to women. Access to women, via phone surveys, is limited since most women do not have their own phone, and even if they are reached, they may not have the freedom to respond to all questions asked. We recommend a detailed protocol with multiple callbacks and rescheduling of calls that reduce sampling errors and allow for greater reach of women respondents and minimise discretionary decisions from the enumerators . We also recommend a set of questions to enumerators to help reflect on the quality of data collected. While phone surveys cannot replace in-person surveys, in the event they are used, a well designed protocol along with the use of meta and para data can go a long way in enhancing the quality and reliabilty of the data.
Topic:
Women, Employment, Survey, Methods, and Data Collection
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

5. The Unhappy Marriage of Women’s Work and Spousal Violence in India

Author:
Vijayshree Jayaraman
Publication Date:
09-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Gender-based violence against women is a public health crisis that highlights the persistent gender inequalities present in our society. Informed by theories in several disciplines, spousal violence can be modelled as a multi-faceted phenomenon arising from the intersection of many factors, that may either be a risk or buffer factors. This papers tries to understand if a women’s employment is a risk or buffer factor for spousal violence. We use the NFHS 4 data-set and develop linear probability models to understand the different channels through which employment may change the likelihood of violence. We find that, being employed makes a woman more vulnerable to spousal violence, particularly if the woman earns more than the husband. Adding to that, we find evidence suggesting ‘female guilt’ present in working wives, where they justify spousal violence especially if ‘the wife is unfaithful’. We argue the need to account for different form of violence while studying spousal violence, which has not been studied previously in the literature and present results for the same.
Topic:
Women, Employment, Gender Based Violence, Domestic Violence, and Bargaining
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

6. Estimating the productivity gap between organised and unorganised small-scale units in India’s manufacturing sector

Author:
Amit Basole, Dimple Chopde, and Paaritosh Nath
Publication Date:
06-2023
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Small manufacturing firms are considered to be engines of growth and job creation. While most research on small firms focuses on formal sector units, in India informal sector units far outnumber the formal. This is true even for manufacturing units employing 5 to 49 workers, which constitute only 5% of all unorganised units, but in absolute numbers are nine times more numerous than organised units in the same size class. Such firms have the potential to contribute to structural transformation but their capacities vis-a-vis formal firms are not well understood. To address this, we create a unit-level dataset combining Annual Survey of Industries data for organised (formal) units with the National Sample Survey data on unorganised (informal) units. We also discuss problems involved in this exercise and some ways to deal with them. We find that matching organised and unorganised units on observable characteristics reduces the labour productivity differences between them to around 25 percent. We discuss some policy implications of our results.
Topic:
Employment, Manufacturing, Productivity, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

7. How Comparable are India’s Labour Market Surveys?

Author:
Rosa Abraham and Anand Shrivastava
Publication Date:
01-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy’s (CMIE) Consumer Pyramid Household surveys have emerged as an important source of regular labour market data for India. Given the differences in methods in data collection between the CMIE and official employment sources, it becomes exceedingly important to establish some comparability between the government and the CMIE datasets. With the release of the official labour surveys, Periodic Labour Force Surveys for 2017-18, we now have an overlap between the official datasets and CMIE datasets. In this paper, we examine the extent of comparability of labour force estimates from these two datasets. We find that employment estimates for men are broadly comparable. However, for women, there is a consistent divergence with CMIE estimates of women’s workforce participation lower than that of NSS-PLFS. We explore the points of divergence in the measurement of women’s work and hypothesise some potential reasons for this difference. We find that irrespective of the reference period used in the PLFS estimation of employment statuses, there is no convergence with the CMIE employment estimate for women’s employment. Moreover, the mismatch in CMIE-PLFS estimates occurs across all types of women’s employment and irrespective of what reference period of employment (in official data) is used.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Women, and Employment
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

8. Loss, Recovery and the Long Road Ahead: Tracking India’s Informal Workers Through the Pandemic

Author:
Paaritosh Nath, Nelson Mandela, and Aishwarya Gawali
Publication Date:
05-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Drawing on results from a panel of 2778 workers interviewed during and after the 68-day hard lockdown imposed in India, the following study examines the livelihood impact of the pandemic and the extent of subsequent recovery or lack thereof. Focussing specifically on workers located in the informal economy, the study is a useful addition to the burgeoning body of work on the economic impacts of Covid-19 by providing an insight into the employment and earnings recovery of those located at the margins. These findings are spliced across socio-economic groups to showcase the differential impact of the pandemic on different demographics within the informal sector. Our results show that six months after the hard lockdown, one out five persons were still out of work. Conditioned on being employed prior to the lockdown and having lost work during the lockdown, we find that urban respondents, women, workers above sixty and graduates were significantly less likely to recover from the shock. A similar exercise carried out for women workers showed that middle aged women, never married women and women who were not-literate women or educated up until primary and middle school were significantly more likely to recover from job loss. Older women, those located in urban areas and Muslim women were on the other hand significantly less likely to recover from the job loss. Earnings on the whole were half of what they used to be prior to the pandemic. Some better off workers shifted to more precarious types of employment. Given the fall in earnings poorer worker households were forced to borrow and the amount of loan taken was multiple times their average monthly income. In the context of loss in employment and reverse migration, the survey results show a substantial unmet demand for work under the MGNREGA programme even after the lockdown was lifted. We conclude that despite a partial recovery in the subsequent period, the pandemic induced lockdown has undermined the material conditions for subsistence for a large segment within the informal economy. Moreover, any attempts made to re-imagine what a social protection programme for the informal economy should look like must take into account the segments most susceptible to an economic shock on their livelihoods.
Topic:
Labor Issues, Employment, Survey, COVID-19, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

9. Who was Impacted and How? Covid-19 Pandemic and the Long Uneven Recovery in India

Author:
Mrinalini Jha and Rahul Lahoti
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
We investigate the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on income levels, poverty, and inequality in both the immediate aftermath and during the long uneven recovery till December 2021 using high-frequency household survey data from India. We find that the average all-India household income dropped between 30 to 38 percent during the months of the nationwide lockdown of April and May 2020. The subsequent recovery remained incomplete and was unevenly spread over the population even twenty-one months after the start of the pandemic. Households on an average continued to make 16 to 19 percent lower cumulative income in the post-lockdown period, but have mostly recovered after the second wave in the second half of 2021. Poverty more than doubled during the lockdown and was 50 to 80 percent higher in the post-lockdown period in comparison to the pre-pandemic levels. In the post-second-wave phase, poverty was still slightly higher than in the pre-pandemic period, and any progress in poverty reduction that would have been achieved under normal circumstances over the two years was lost. Inequality too spiked during the lockdown, but returned back to the pre-pandemic levels. Using an event study model we find that the initial shock of the lockdown was more severe for the bottom of the income distribution, but the bottom also experienced a faster recovery. On the other hand, the top end of the distribution experienced smaller declines during the lockdown but they have been slow to recover. The bottom deciles in any period typically constituted households working in contact-intensive, informal, less secure occupations that were hit the hardest during the lockdown, but were quick to recover when the economy opened up. The upper end of the distribution constituted households working in less contact-intensive, formal, secure occupations that were shielded from the sudden shock but were slow to recover.
Topic:
Poverty, Employment, COVID-19, Economic Recovery, and Income
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

10. Labour Reforms in the Indian State of Rajasthan: a boon or a bane?

Author:
Sourabh Paul and Diti Goswami
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The authors examine the impact of labour law deregulations in the Indian state of Rajasthan on plant employment and performance. In 2014, after a long time, Rajasthan was the first Indian state that introduced labour reforms in the Industrial Disputes Act (1947), the Factories Act (1948), the Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act (1970), and the Apprentices Act (1961). Exploiting this unique quasi-natural experiment, the authors apply a difference-in-difference framework using the Annual Survey of Industries longitudinal data of India’s manufacturing establishments. Their results show that reforms had an unintended consequence of the decline in labour use. Also, worryingly, the flexibility resulted in a disproportionate decline in the directly employed worker. Evidence suggests that the reforms positively impact the value-added and productivity of the establishments. The strength of these effects varies depending on the underlying industry and reform structure. These findings prove robust to a set of specifications.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Reform, Employment, and Regulation
Political Geography:
India

11. Can a Machine Learn Democracy?

Author:
Rajendran Narayanan, Sakina Dhorajiwala, and Chakradhar Buddha
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) provides up to 100 days of work in a year for every rural household at a minimum wage. The Act has several landmark worker-centric provisions. For the implementation of MGNREGA, for the first time in the country, a transaction-based Management Information System (MIS) has been made available in the public domain; a feather in the cap of transparency. However, there are several critical questions to be examined in this regard. Our main focus in this article is to explore the tensions between technocracy and democratic values/participation in the context of MGNREGA and its associated MIS. We use our action research on information-based interventions in several states to examine whether the MGNREGA MIS incorporates democratic values, whether it has been inclusive or if it has widened the existing inequities. We use specific examples to illustrate how such an information system has been used to subvert the legal rights of workers. We underscore that technological interventions, with a compassionate human-centred design are potentially powerful tools for transparency, accountability, and grievance redressal. However, technology alone can neither enhance participatory democracy nor reduce socio-economic inequalities.
Topic:
Economics, Science and Technology, Labor Issues, Democracy, Employment, and Artificial Intelligence
Political Geography:
India

12. Tracking Employment Trajectories during the Covid-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Indian Panel Data

Author:
Rosa Abraham, Amit Basole, and Surbhi Kesar
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Using the CMIE’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey, we track a panel of households prior to the lockdown (in December 2019), during the lockdown (in April 2020) and afterwards (in August 2020) to investigate the employment and income effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and its associated containment measures. We identify four distinct employment experiences during the pandemic for those who were in the workforce just prior to the lockdown: no loss of employment (“No effect”), loss of employment followed by recovery (“Recovery”), loss of employment with no recovery (“No recovery”), and a delayed loss of employment (“Delayed job loss”). Overall, 54% of individuals experienced no job loss, while 30% lost work in April but recovered by August. 12% had not recovered employment as of August 2020. We analyse how these trajectories vary across different social and economic characteristics to quantify contractions and recovery in the labour market and the extent to which the vulnerabilities vary across different social groups, employment arrangements, and industries. We find that women were substantially more likely to lose employment as well as less likely to recover employment. Job loss was also more severe for lower castes as compared to intermediate and upper castes and for daily wage workers as compared to regular wage workers. Younger workers were particularly vulnerable to job loss compared to older workers. Having lost employment in April, younger workers were also less likely to recover employment in August. Finally, for those who were employed in both December 2019 and August 2020, we examine the changes in employment arrangements. We find a much greater frequency of transitions from wage employment to self-employment, more than that in the seasonally comparable period last year (Dec 2018 to Aug 2019). Our results call for urgent additional fiscal measures to counteract these effects.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, Unemployment, Pandemic, Job Creation, and Consumerism
Political Geography:
India

13. A Short Note on Debt-Neutral Fiscal Policy

Author:
Zico Dasgupta
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
One of the central concerns against increasing expenditures in the recent period has been the possibility of an adverse impact on debt-GDP ratio. Once stability of debt-ratio is regarded as a policy-objective, the aggregate expenditure that is consistent with the stability condition gets determined by the given level of output growth rate and revenue receipts. Instead of perceiving expenditures to be determined by the debt-stability condition, this short note attempts to lay bare the conditions under which the debt-stability condition is restored despite increasing the growth rate of non-capital primary expenditure to a targeted level. The targeted level of growth rate of non-capital expenditures can be perceived to be one which compensates for the income loss of labour during the pandemic. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the possibility of increasing such expenditures is explored not by reducing capital expenditures, but rather by increasing the latter. Using the multiplier value of capital expenditures estimated by the RBI, it is argued that the debt-ratio would remain unchanged despite increasing the growth rate of non capital primary expenditure if the capital expenditures growth rate is allowed to increase in a specific proportion.
Topic:
Debt, Economics, Political Economy, Labor Issues, GDP, Employment, and Fiscal Policy
Political Geography:
India

14. Technical & Vocational Education and Training in India: Lacking Vision, Strategy and Coherence

Author:
Santosh Mehrotra
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper briefly examines the performance of each of the five pillars of India’s TVET ecosystem. It also discusses the poor design and implementation of a national vocational qualification framework. It goes to discuss the latest development in the field of education: the National Education Policy 2020 and its view on TVET, and finds it seriously wanting. The paper argues that if India does not want its tertiary education system to be overwhelmed by the massification of school education that occurred since early noughties, it must divert increasing numbers of secondary graduates to vocational education and training. Together with a rising number of jobs in the non-agricultural sector, to which India’s youth aspire to, strengthening vocational education offers the prospect of India potentially realizing its demographic dividend, in the same way that many East Asian countries. If India’s TVET system continues to lack vision, strategy and coherence to underpin the country’s aspiration to become a high human development country, we risk frittering away our dividend.
Topic:
Economics, Education, Labor Issues, Employment, Training, and Vocational Training
Political Geography:
India

15. Explaining COVID-19 Lockdown, Employment and Migration in India: Challenges and Prospects

Author:
Purna Chandra Parida and Yogesh Suri
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper makes an attempt to do an assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on employment and migration in India. The analysis is based on up-to-date facts and figures available in the public domain on economic growth, employment and migration. Using the employment elasticity approach, the study estimates employment loss during 2020-21 owing to the negative impact of COVID-19 on economic activities. The results of the study suggest that the country may witness job loss with the tune of 18.5  18.8 million in the current fiscal year. This in turn would shoot up the unemployment rate from 5.8% in 2018-19 to 8.9% in 2020-21, warranting a coordinated and focused approach from both the Central and State governments to uplift the confidence of the people and bring back the lost jobs, particularly the migrant workers. The study also emphasises on Central government’s urgent attention and action plan for uplifting the rural economy in order to revive India’s economy in the short run.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, Employment, Economic Growth, and COVID-19
Political Geography:
India

16. Covid-19 Crisis: An Indictment of India’s Informal Economy

Author:
Jenny Sulfath and Balu Sunilraj
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
This paper attempts to look at the ways informality is conceptualized in India and argues that the problems with the laws pertaining to informal labour are not simply an implementation issue, but the design of the labour laws itself exclude informal labour. While reviewing the history of labour laws in India and the social history of labour participation, the paper also examines the current change in the political approach to labour by changing the labour laws in the pretext of the pandemic. Focussing on the changes made in labour laws in Madhya Pradesh the paper argues that these changes would further informalise the workers intensifying the crisis.
Topic:
Economics, Labor Issues, Employment, and Informal Economy
Political Geography:
India

17. Down and Out? The Gendered Impact of the Covid-19 Pandemic on India’s Labour Market

Author:
Rosa Abraham, Amit Basole, and Surbhi Kesar
Publication Date:
02-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented disruptions in labour markets across the world including loss of employment and decline in incomes. Using panel data from India, we investigate the differential impact of the shock on labour market outcomes for male and female workers. We find that, conditional on being in the workforce prior to the pandemic, women were seven times more likely to lose work during the nationwide lockdown, and conditional on losing work, eleven times more likely to not return to work subsequently, compared to men. Using logit regressions on a sample stratified by gender, we find that daily wage and young workers, whether men or women, were more likely to face job loss. Education shielded male workers from job loss, whereas highly educated female workers were more vulnerable to job loss. Marriage had contrasting effects for men and women, with married women less likely to return to work and married men more likely to return to work. Religion and gender intersect to exacerbate the disproportionate impact, with Muslim women more likely to not return to work, unlike Muslim men where we find religion having no significant impact. Finally, for those workers who did return to work, we find that a large share of men in the workforce moved to self-employment or daily wage work, in agriculture, trade or construction. For women, on the other hand, there is limited movement into alternate employment arrangements or industries. This suggests that typical ‘fallback’ options for employment do not exist for women. During such a shock, women are forced to exit the workforce whereas men negotiate across industries and employment arrangements.
Topic:
Economics, Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Women, Employment, and Labor Market
Political Geography:
India

18. How Much is a Government Job in India Worth?

Author:
Kunal Mangal
Publication Date:
06-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Government jobs in India are valuable, not just because they pay relatively higher wages, but also because they provide many valuable amenities, such as lifetime tenure, access to bribes, and prestige. Does the value of these amenities compete with the nominal wage itself? I use the observed search behavior of candidates preparing for highly structured competitive exams for government jobs to infer a lower bound on the total value of a government job, including amenities. Based on a sample of 120 male candidates preparing for state-level civil service exams in Pune, Maharashtra, I estimate a total value of at least 425,000 INR per month. This estimate implies that the amenity value of a government job is at least 81% of total compensation. The high amenity value is not driven by misinformed beliefs about the nominal wage, nor by a high value placed on the process of studying itself. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings for policy and the questions it raises for future research.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Employment, Public Sector, Job Creation, and Workforce
Political Geography:
India

19. Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go? Labour Market Transitions in India

Author:
Rahul Menon and Paaritosh Nath
Publication Date:
07-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
Using two rounds of the Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS) covering the periods 2017-18 and 2018-19, we construct a panel of urban Indian individuals aged 15 to 65, and analyse the dynamics of their participation – or non-participation – in the labour force. We construct transition probabilities to study the movement of individuals through three distinct statuses – employment, unemployment and non-participation – at the aggregate level and for different demographic groups. We find evidence of considerable movements from the labour force to non-participation; there exists a significant discouraged worker effect as well as a pronounced movement from employment outside the labour force, specifically for women. A majority of those unemployed in the beginning of the year remain so at the end of the year, indicating the presence of long-term unemployment. The reduction in unemployment rates from 2017-18 to 2018-19 hides significant weaknesses in Indian urban labour markets. This study represents an original contribution to the field of Indian labour economics, given the paucity of large-scale studies of the dynamics of Indian labour.
Topic:
Economics, Migration, Labor Issues, Employment, Labor Market, and Workforce
Political Geography:
India

20. Improving Survey Quality using Para Data: Lessons from the India Working Survey

Author:
Deepti Goel, Rosa Abraham, and Rahul Lahoti
Publication Date:
08-2021
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Sustainable Employment, Azim Premji University
Abstract:
The efficacy of survey-based policy recommendations is primarily dictated by the quality of data collected in the first place. Is the survey truly representative of the population it claims to characterise? Are respondents voicing their true opinions or are they playing to the gallery? Did enumerator bias creep into the data? These are questions that most users of surveys have, but are typically brushed aside in the race to get the analyses out. While there are no foolproof measures to ensure that survey data are authentic, certain steps can be taken to improve their dependability. One such is the use of what is called ‘para data’ (data about the process of data collection), to streamline enumerator practices, and thereby improve the reliability of the data being collected. This report details our experience of using para data to improve the quality of the India Working Survey (IWS).
Topic:
Economics, Employment, Survey, Data, and Workforce
Political Geography:
India