Determinants of Home Based Work in Non-Agriculture Sector of India

Abstract

This paper investigates factors which influence any individual to participate in home-based work using two rounds of cross-sectional nationally representative unit-level data of NSS-EU. Along with descriptive statistics, multinomial logistic regression (mlogit) model is used to estimate the probability of participation in home-based work for men and women separately with micro- and macro-characteristics. Result shows that high fixed cost is an important determinant of home-based work. It is also shown that when loss of joint household production by working outside is high, workers prefer to work from home. Social and cultural norms also play an important role in choice of work, especially for women workers. These norms restrict women worker’s choice of work, and the present paper shows that strict social and cultural norms restrict women to home-based work. The observed trend of de-feminization of home-based work is mainly associated with changes within structure of home-based work. There have been two types of restructuring. First, a part of home-based work has shifted from low-earning manufacturing to high-earning manufacturing. This high-earning work is more skill demanding where women workers have lost out. Second, home-based work has witnessed diversification away from manufacturing to trading and services industries.