The crisis and job guarantees in urban India

Dhingra, Swati ORCID: 0000-0001-5468-3415 and Machin, Stephen Jonathan ORCID: 0009-0004-8130-2701 (2020) The crisis and job guarantees in urban India. CEP Discussion Papers (CEPDP1719). London School of Economics and Political Science. Centre for Economic Performance, London, UK.

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Abstract

This paper uses a new field survey of low-wage areas of urban India to show that employment and earnings were decimated by the lockdown resulting from the Covid-19 crisis. It examines workers’ desire for a job guarantee in this setting. Workers who had a job guarantee before the crisis were relatively shielded by not being hit quite so hard in terms of the increased incidence of job loss or working zero hours and earnings losses. A stated choice experiment contained in the survey reveals evidence that low-wage workers are willing to give up around a quarter of their daily wage for a job guarantee. And direct survey questions corroborate this, with informal, young and female workers being most likely to want a job guarantee, and to want it even more due to the current crisis.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	https://cep.lse.ac.uk/_new/publications/discussion...
Additional Information:	© 2020 The Author(s)
Divisions:	Economics
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD8689 Working Class - India
JEL classification:	J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J6 - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies > J68 - Public Policy L - Industrial Organization > L5 - Regulation and Industrial Policy > L52 - Industrial Policy; Sectoral Planning Methods P - Economic Systems > P2 - Socialist Systems and Transitional Economies > P25 - Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics; Housing; Transportation J - Labor and Demographic Economics > J4 - Particular Labor Markets > J40 - General
Date Deposited:	11 Jan 2021 12:27
Last Modified:	01 Nov 2024 04:58
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/108222

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