Tasks and Opportunities within Indian Families

This paper uses the Indian Time Use Survey (1999) to document gender inequalities in adult and child tasks and to focus on an important determinant of the opportunities of children – the resources invested in their education. Specifically, we examine the school attendance of boys and girls and the relative probability that Indian children will receive informal parental instruction or assistance with learning at home. We document gender inequities in the allocation of household tasks among adults and children but we find little evidence of gender favouritism in human capital investment. In rural areas school attendance falls off much more rapidly with age for girls, but in urban areas in India the school attendance of boys and girls is essentially the same. In both urban and rural areas gender is statistically insignificant as a correlate of the prevalence or the allocation of parental instruction time.