Abstract: Catastrophic floods threaten 1.8 billion lives worldwide. Of these, 22 percent live in India. How do extreme floods reshape gendered paid labor outcomes? To answer this, I first show that flood shocks increase gender inequality in paid labor supply and also widened working poor in South Asia. That brings to next question, who gets affected first and for whom the effect lasts longer? Using the 2018 catastrophic Kerala flood, I estimate time-varying trends in paid labor supply of men and women before and after the event. Key results show that men experienced short-lived reduction in their employment while women faced a delayed but persistent decline in their working hours. Men were worst impacted in secondary sector and increased their participation in primary sector. On the contrary, women were hit hardest in tertiary sector. Such sectoral impacts could be attributable to disruptions in infrastructure and physical capital. Moreover, marital status and dependency burden further shape the gender differential effects of the extreme flood event.
Speaker: Jheelum Sarkar is a fourth-year PhD student in Economics at American University, Washington DC. Her dissertation explores how telework feasibility, armed conflicts and natural disasters impact labor market outcomes. She is passionate about sustainable development, equity and innovation. Previously, she completed MPhil and MA from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi, India. She did her B.Sc. in Economics from Lady Brabourne College, University of Calcutta, India. When she is not thinking about Economics, she is either painting, reading storybooks or experimenting with new recipes in kitchen.