C HILD S CHOOLING AND W ORK D ECISIONS IN I NDIA :T HE R OLE OF H OUSEHOLD AND R EGIONAL G ENDER E QUITY Uma Sarada Kambhampati ABSTRACT This paper tests three hypotheses about how mothers’ autonomy in India affects their children’s participation in school and the labor market. To do so it extends the concept of mothers’ autonomy beyond the household to include the constraints imposed by the extent of gender equity in the regions in which these women live. This study began with the expectation that increased autonomy for Indian mothers living in heterosexual households would increase child schooling and decrease child work. However, the results are mixed, indicating that mother’s autonomy can be reinforced or constrained by the environment. The paper concludes that mothers and fathers in India make different decisions for girls vis-a `-vis boys and that the variables reflecting mothers’ autonomy vary in their impact, so that mothers’ level of education relative to fathers’ is not often statistically significant, while mothers’ increased contributions to household expenditure decrease the probability of schooling and girls’ work. KEYWORDS Child labor, gender roles, intrahousehold inequality JEL Codes: D13, J16 INTRODUCTION This paper considers whether increased autonomy for mothers in India improves child welfare, specifically in terms of whether children attend school or participate in the labor market. In this context, the factors used to determine how much autonomy a mother possesses are her education and employment status, her education and income contributions relative to her spouse, and the extent of gender equity that prevails in the region in which she lives. The paper asks whether mothers and fathers make symmetric decisions with regard to child work and schooling, whether mothers with greater autonomy make ‘‘better’’ decisions than those with less autonomy, and whether kinship systems are important in determining these decisions. Feminist Economics 15(4), October 2009, 77–112 Feminist Economics ISSN 1354-5701 print/ISSN 1466-4372 online Ó 2009 IAFFE http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/13545700903153997