02429nam a22001457a 4500 533000 533000 260410b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Goldar, Bishwanath Dasgupta, Purnamita and Aggarwal, Suresh Chand 60041 Impact of rural wages on rural women’s decision regarding time spent on productive work, household work and care work The Indian Journal of Labour Economics 68(4), Oct-Dec, 2025: p.1317-1342 Recent employment data from India displays significant hikes in female labour force participation (FLFP) rates since 2017–18, departing from the decades-long phenomena of persistently declining and stagnating FLFP. Declines observed in FLFP in India in the past, as elsewhere in South Asia, have been flagged as a concern, being a marker of lost opportunities to raise economic growth and well-being for women. The role of wages in explaining the low participation levels has been extensively studied, along with the role of other economic, social, and cultural determinants. Dasgupta and Goldar (2006) had reported findings that indicate a backward bending supply curve of labour in rural India, noting further that the changeover from a positive relationship to an inverse relationship between the supply of labour and wage rates occurs at low wages (i.e., among poor households), especially for women in rural areas in India. The recent hikes in FLFP motivate the authors to revisit this relationship with updated datasets, namely, the Time Use Survey, 2019 and Periodic Labour Force Survey, 2019–20. In particular, we examine rural women’s choices among productive work, care work, and household work. Our findings reveal the persistence of a backward bending supply curve, even where there is evidence of convergence and upward movements in wages for some parts of the country. Several other socio-economic determinants previously identified as relevant in influencing rural women’s decision-making on the time to be spent on productive work continue to be relevant. The wage cut-off for decision-making on engaging with productive work is also found to remain at a relatively low level.-Reproduced https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41027-025-00584-y Rural wages, Female labour supply, Productive work, Employment, Labour force datasets, India 60042 The Indian Journal of Labour Economics AR 0 0 ddc 0 0 408171 IIPA IIPA 2026-04-10 68(4), Oct-Dec, 2025: p.1317-1342 AR138512 2026-04-10 AR