Abstract:-
This paper examines the gender-specific impacts of digital financial services on employment and time-use patterns in India. We analyze how access to digital financial services influences labor market outcomes and intra-household labor allocation. Employing a two-stage least squares (2SLS) approach to address potential endogeneity, we find that increased digital financial services leads to switching in employment from self-employment to regular wage employment for men. For women, we find an increase in regular employment. At the intensive margin, we find increases in time spent on both self and regular employment for both genders with women gaining more than men. The increased time allocation in employment is derived from reduction in domestic responsibilities for women, and is driven by increased usage of banking services, internet and digital payment platforms.

(Jointly with Ashish Sedai and Rikhia Bhukta)