Period products during the pandemic: The impact of lockdown on period products usage

This paper estimates the impact of the government-mandated intensity of the lockdown across various zones on the period product consumption for menstruating women in India. We have used the national-level panel data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE)’s Consumer Pyramids Household Survey (CPHS) database across 510 districts of India, along with the lockdown zones data. Our study uses a robust strategy to exploit the temporal (non-lockdown vs. during lockdown) and spatial (across red, orange, and green zones) variation by using difference-in-difference estimates by exploring the impact of lockdown policy on period product expenditure over households from January 2020 to December 2020. Our results show a reduction of 16% in period products consumption in red zone districts compared to the green zone districts. When restricting attention to rural districts only, this reduction was 25%. Travel restrictions on consumers combined with restrictions on movements of goods led to severe shortages in period products. There is a strong need to start interventions to improve the period products usage and create robust infrastructure to ensure deliveries, especially during emergencies.