| Abstract |
This paper uses micro-data from the 1998-99 Indian Time Use Survey (ITUS) (covering 77,593 persons in 18,591 households) to examine gender inequality in child well-being and in human capital investment decisions within Indian families. We study three issues: [1] school attendance of boys and girls; [2] parental investment in informal instruction of boys and girls; [3] time to play for boys and girls - an indicator of current child well-being. We examine the relative impact of father's or mother's education in enhancing the current or future well-being of female/male children, the role of subjective self-consciousness (i.e. women who state they do/do not "participate in family decisions") and the importance of local context. Regressions use controls for parental socio-economic characteristics, water-carrying time, the quality of local schools, place in birth order, number and gender of siblings. ITUS data record the time each adult spent in "Teaching, Training And Instruction Of Own Children". We examine the role which such instruction plays in human capital acquisition and the determinants and the extent of intra-family inequality in parental time invested. Preliminary results indicate strong within-family specialization. Local school quality is crucial for school attendance and total time invested in formal education. More generally, data on the market incomes and financial flows of households cannot reveal much about the behaviour of individuals who have little or no money income or expenditure - but everyone has time to spend. Hence, time use data can analyze aspects of the development process (like human capital investment decisions) which largely involve decisions about time allocation within households, outside the market economy. |