Manufacturing Growth and the Lives of Bangladeshi Women

By Rachel Heath, A. M. Mobarak. Social Science Research Network, 2015

386 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We study the effects of explosive growth in the Bangladeshi ready-made garments industry on the lives on Bangladeshi women. We compare the marriage, childbearing, school enrollment and employment decisions of women who gain greater access to garment sector jobs to women living further away from factories, to years before the factories arrive close to some villages, and to the marriage and enrollment decisions of their male siblings. Girls exposed to the garment sector delay marriage and childbirth. This stems from (a) young girls becoming more likely to be enrolled in school after garment jobs (which reward literacy and numeracy) arrive, and (b) older girls becoming more likely to be employed outside the home in garment-proximate villages. The demand for education generated through manufacturing growth appears to have a much larger effect on female educational attainment compared to a large-scale government conditional cash transfer program to encourage female schooling.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/63fc2dbddcc50c45327e0198f1ac3b1b39f94008

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Gender Studies

In Safety Research

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

Do rural roads create pathways out of poverty? Evidence from India (2018, background): “For instance, Heath and Mobarak (2015) show that the advent of garment manufacturing in Bangladesh was associated with enrollment gains for young girl as tailoring jobs require a basic level of numeracy.”
The global state of evidence on interventions to prevent child marriage (2017, methodology): “…Components Approaches used Other outcomes examined Other outcomes successfully impacted Bangladesh Garment factory placement, 1980s–2009a Heath and Mobarak 2015 Natural Experiment Single Exposure to garment industry Empowerment Educational attainment, enrollment, childbirth Educational…”
Women and Work in India: Descriptive Evidence and a Review of Potential Policies (2017, background): “In addition, access to and information regarding female-specific labor market opportunities improves female educational attainment and delays age of marriage and childbearing (Heath and Mobarak, 2014; Jensen, 2012).”
Management and Shocks to Worker Productivity (2019, neutral): “The steady transition of employment shares in much of the developing world, from rural agricultural self-employment to urban wage labor, is manifest in the readymade garments industry, which mainly employs relatively young unskilled/semi-skilled workers, many of them female (Heath and Mobarak, 2015;”
Cycling to School: Increasing Secondary School Enrollment for Girls in India (2013, neutral): “Heath and Mobarak (2015) find that a Bangladeshi CCT program (which paid a stipend of $0.64–$1.50/month to girls in grades 6–10) had no impact on enrollment.”
Occupational Choice in Early Industrializing Societies: Experimental Evidence on the Income and Health Effects of Industrial and Entrepreneurial Work (2016, positive): “Heath and Mobarak (2014) show that growth in the Bangladeshi textile industry increases girls’ age at marriage and educational attainment.”