Going beyond the surface: heterogeneous effect of on-site water access for women

This paper examines the effect of the public infrastructure investment on time allocation patterns, focusing on the heterogeneity within females based on their intra-household gender roles in the context of rural Pakistan. It analyzes the association between the public infrastructure investment (access to on-site drinking water) and the time allocation in labor market work (paid and subsistence), household and care work, as well as in learning, leisure, and self-maintenance using Pakistan Time Use Data 2007 with seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) approach. Full sample of females is divided into sub-samples by household type, nuclear and multi-generational households and intra-household gender roles are captured by relationship to the household head (spouse, daughter/grand-daughter, mother, daughter-in-law). The results indicate significant heterogeneity among females explained by their gender roles. Access to water, reallocates the time saved from unpaid work towards subsistence work and self-maintenance with negative effect on learning. While the access to water reduces the household work for a wife in a nuclear household and for the mother-in-law in a multigenerational household, there is no effect on the time spent in household or care work for the daughter-in-law.