THREE ESSAYS ON GENDER, UNCONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFERS AND TIME USE
Creators: name: Malhi, Fareena N.
Publisher: name: American University
Year: 2023

description: Gender equality – a Sustainable Development Goal, may not be achieved without recognizing the work females are already performing. This dissertation gives deeper insights to measurement issues of female labor force participation, intra-household hierarchy within females in multi-generational set up and the long-term effect of unconditional cash transfers on attitudes of the beneficiaries. Time Use surveys provides a unique opportunity to accurately measure the time allocated to unpaid reproductive work (URW) and labor market work, circumventing any self-reporting bias. In my first essay, using Pakistan Time Use, I identified invisible labor force, 88 percent of which constitutes of women. Further, I examine the effect of husband’s earning potential and his adherence to patriarchal norms on wife’s probability to participate in invisible labor force. I develop a theoretical model to examine the trade-off between social cost of wife’s labor market work and its financial gains to the household. My findings show the more conservative the husband is, higher is the probability that wife will participate in invisible labor. Next, I analyze the effect of access to public infrastructure (on-site water sources and natural gas for cooking) on the time allocated to URW of females and how is it reallocated to other welfare enhancing activities. Further, it examines the association between ownership of labor-saving appliances (washing machine and refrigerator) and time devoted to laundry and food preparation respectively employing instrumental variable regression. The findings indicate that intra-household hierarchy within females results in heterogeneous effect of the interventions – increasing the unpaid and reproductive work for daughters-in-law while boosting leisure for mothers-in-law. Moreover, in the households with access to piped water and electricity the ownership of washing machine increases the laundry time by 25 percent while owning a refrigerator attenuates the time allocated to food preparation by 9 percent. Lastly, in the third essay, I employ propensity score weighting and regression adjustment, to examine the impact of unconditional cash transfers (Benazir Income Support Program (BISP)) on aspirations of the adults in Pakistan. Using Pakistan Rural Household Panel Survey 2012-2013, I construct the aspirations index by weighting and aggregating on four dimensions; income, assets, social status and education. I find BISP cash transfers to increase aspirations index of men by 0.23 standard deviations yet for women, it only impacts those belonging to the poorest households, boosting their aspirations by 0.14 standard deviations. Given the global awakening to the salience of female labor force participation, it is imperative to understand the nuanced context-specific issues females face. This dissertation will contribute by providing insights to the underlying intra-household dynamics in a patriarchal society, with high prevalence of multi-generational households and what role social protection programs can play.