Neudc2023 598

Do Safer Streets Increase Female Labour Force Participation?
Evidence from India and Indonesia.
August 17, 2023
Alice Cahill
Abstract
This paper examines the impact of neighbourhood street safety on
female labour force participation in Indonesia’s capital, Jakarta, and five
major Indian cities, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Pune. Fe-
male labour force participation has been stagnant in India and Indonesia
over the last three decades, despite growth in GDP, female education and
declining fertility. Street safety may explain part of this puzzle: in many
contexts the risk of harassment and assault poses a substantial gendered
cost to entering the labour force. I employ generalised propensity score
methods to estimate a dose response function for labour force participa-
tion (Imbens 2000). The data comes from three sources: crowd-sourced
street safety data collected by the mobile app SafetiPin; a 2015-16 DHS
dataset from India; and, the fifth wave of the RAND Indonesian Family
Life Survey. In Indonesia, I find a substantial and significant positive
treatment effect: women living in ‘high’ safety neighbourhoods are 8.5
percentage points more likely to participate in the labour force relative
to women living in ‘low’ safety neighbourhoods. The results from India
are insignificant and inconclusive. Concerns with selection on unobserv-
ables poses a major challenge to identification and these results should
be interpreted with caution.
1
Contents
1 Introduction 3
2 Literature Review 5
2.1 Street Safety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.2 Female Labour Force Participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3 Data 8
3.1 IFLS Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2 DHS Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3 SafetiPin Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.4 Variable Definitions and Sample Statistics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4 Methodology 15
5 Results 19
5.1 Indonesia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
5.2 India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
5.3 Heterogeneity Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
5.4 Robustness Checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
6 Conclusion 27
A Appendix 36
A.1 Street Safety Maps (2014-18) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
A.2 Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2
1 Introduction
Gender disparities are starkest in developing countries (Jayachandran 2015). According to
the Women’s Peace and Security index, Indonesia and India rank 100th and 148th , respec-
tively, on a list of the ‘best’ 170 countries to be a woman (GIPWPS 2019) [AC note: must
update this ref to 2021]. The index aggregates 11 measures of female empowerment, in-
cluding female employment and street safety. This paper examines the relationship between
these two measures.1
Female labour force participation (FLFP) contributes to myriad economic goals: it har-
nesses advantageous age structures (Klasen & Pieters 2012), raises savings (Seguino & Floro
2003), improves women’s bargaining power (Majlesi 2016, Field et al. 2016), increases in-
vestment in children’s health and (girls’) human capital (Jensen 2010) and raises aspirations
among young girls (Beaman et al. 2012). In India, less than one in four women work and
this is declining (KILM-ILO 2014). In Indonesia, female employment has stagnated at 53
percent (Cameron et al. 2018). The impasse of FLFP in these two contexts is puzzling: India
and Indonesia have enjoyed GDP growth, falling fertility, improvements in female education
and higher returns to education over the past two decades; all are drivers of female employ-
ment. Studies of this puzzle tend to focus on individual, household and local labour market
determinants. Little attention has been paid to the role of fear and personal safety.
The gang rape and murder of a 23 year old women on a bus in Delhi in 2012 turned a
global spotlight on violence against women in India. In the wake of this incident, a study
revealed that half of women in Delhi believed public spaces to be unsafe at all times, 17
percent have quit their job because of harassment and 10 percent never leave their homes
for fear of violence, assault and harassment (Madan & Nalla 2016). Delhi and Jakarta were
ranked as having the fourth and fifth most dangerous transport systems for women in a
global Reuters survey (Reuters 2014). In Indonesia, a quarter of women do not feel their
community is safe (GIPWPS 2019).
A small number of studies have found that fear of violence may be having large effects on
women’s mobility, education and employment (Muralidharan & Prakash 2017, Chakraborty
et al. 2018, Siddique 2018, Borker 2018). This paper adds to this literature by employing a
dose response function to estimate the effect of street safety on female labour force participa-
tion across the distribution of ‘danger’, which is helpful for policy targeting considerations.
I use survey data from the fifth round of the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS5) and the
seventh wave of the Demographic Health Survey (DHS7 India). I use a novel and detailed
source of safety data from the mobile app SafetiPin. SafetiPin was founded in Delhi in 2013,
in the wake of the 2021 Delhi gang-rape and murder, with the aim of making public spaces
1
In this paper, the term ‘safety’ refers specifically to safety for women in public areas.
3
safer for vulnerable groups, especially women. The SafetiPin data is partially crowd-sourced
from their mobile application and partially collected by trained auditors. Each safety audit
is precisely geo-referenced, allowing Safetipin data to be merged link with the DHS and IFLS
datasets based on coordinates. The Safetipin dataset covers Jakarta, Delhi, Mumbai, Pune,
Kolkata and Bangalore’s metropolitan areas between 2014-2018.
Lacking information on a given woman’s (real or potential) commute pathway, I proxy the
geographic area encompassed by her commute with that of her neighbourhood, introducing
noise into the estimation procedure and reducing estimate precision. However, I believe it is
a reasonable proxy: a woman will typically commute through her own neighbourhood in the
early morning and evening, when the fear of harassment and assault is more salient; moreover,
unsafe areas are likely to have ‘bad neighbours’ as street safety displays high levels of spatial
correlation. The major concern is selection bias: women self-select into neighbourhoods.
This study uses propensity score matching on a rich vector of covariates, appealing to the
conditional independence assumption (weak unconfoundedness) (Imbens 2000). The findings
of this paper are, therefore, dependant on the argument that, with knowledge of the marginal
distribution of observed covariates, selection bias can be eliminated, or at least that the
remaining selection bias associated with unobserved characteristics is small in size. A crucial
caveat to the results below is that, as shown by a Rosenbaum bounds test, despite the
matching procedure, selection on unobservables remains a major challenge to identification.
In Indonesia, I find that increasing the ‘dosage’ of neighbourhood safety from low to
medium has an average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) of 3.8 percentage points
(7 percent) and increasing the ‘dosage’ to high has an ATT of 8.5 percentage points (16
percent). This is comparable to the effects of job proximity (Heath & Mobarak 2014),
which may suggest that similar mechanisms drive women’s employment decisions in the
face of safer commutes and employment opportunities closer to home . The treatment
effects are larger for younger and for richer women. These results are robust to alternative
definitions of the treatment and outcome variables, standard propensity score matching and
inverse probability weighting specifications. I find no significant treatment effect for men,
suggesting my definition of street safety is successful in capturing gender-based harassment.
The ATTs for the Indian sample are negative and insignificant. I believe that this is due
to measurement error induced by DHS’ displacement procedure: approximately a quarter of
women are assigned to the wrong neighbourhood, which results in attenuation bias. I find a
small, weakly significant ATT for a medium safety dosage for high- caste Hindu women.
In the next section I place this paper in the context of the literature. Section 3 describes
the data, key variables and presents descriptive statistics. Section 4 lays out the analytical
framework and the empirical methodology. Section 5 presents the main results, heterogeneity
analyses and robustness checks. I conclude with section 6.
4
2 Literature Review
2.1 Street Safety
Women are the victims of the majority of street harassment and their behaviour is more
responsive to the risk of victimisation (Ferraro 1995). Street harassment places greater
constraints on women’s mobility, behaviour and choices in developing countries, where public
spaces in rapidly urbanising areas tend to be less safe for women, victims of sexual assault
face greater social stigma and there is weaker legal protection (Tavares & Wodon 2018).
India is an important context to study street safety. Its capital Delhi is ranked second for
verbal street harassment (GIPWPS 2019). 95 percent of women in India say their mobility
is affected by street harassment (ibid.) and three quarters of women in Delhi face harass-
ment in their own neighbourhood (Bhatla et al. 2013). Street harassment is less acute in
Indonesia. Nevertheless, the Jakarta-based branch of the community anti-harassment or-
ganisation ‘Hollaback!’ reports that harassment is commonplace on public transport and in
public spaces in Jakarta (Hollaback! 2020). Perhaps because harassment is less prevalent,
there is limited research on its implications. To my knowledge, this is the first quantitative
study of the outcomes of street safety in Indonesia.
Becker et al. (2011) provide a framework for analysing the impact of the fear of low
probability events (such as sexual assault) on individual behaviour. Fear is defined as the
extent to which an individual’s subjective assessment differs from the true danger of a risky
activity (Kahneman & Tversky 2018). Becker et al. (2011) show that fear has a distortative
effect: individuals substitute out of risky activities based on their subjective assessment;
others make costly investments to overcome fear. They find over-assessment of risk is more
prevalent among the less-educated. In this paper, the danger is sexual assault in public
spaces, and the risky activity is participation in the labour market. Conceivably, women from
poorer households cannot forgo labour income so may be more willing to invest in overcoming
the fear of harassment (Siddique 2018). Conversely, social norms among conservative social
groups may attach greater stigma costs to sexual assault2 and younger women may face
greater danger,3 which would increase the probability that both groups substitute out of the
labour market (Chakraborty et al. 2018).
A growing strand of literature explores the determinants and effects of violence towards
women. Ackerson et al. (2008) find community poverty and education to be determinants
of intimate partner violence (IPV). In developing countries, improvements in the economic
position of women prompt a ‘backlash effect’ increasing male-perpetrated IPV (Bhalotra
2
More conservative social norms may attach greater stigma to sexual assault
3
In India, 90 percent of women report their first experience of sexual harassment before the age of 17 (Livingston
2015).
5
et al. 2018). A small body of research looks at the reverse of this relationship and finds
that safety to be an important determinant of female employment. In India, Siddique (2018)
shows that an increase in district-level media reports of sexual assault reduces the probability
of a woman working outside her home by 3.6 percent. This effect is weaker for women from
poorer households and is stronger for Muslim women, which lends support to the social norms
argument. Chakraborty et al. (2018) test whether an increase in crime against women raises
the cost of travelling to work in urban regions of India. They find that in neighbourhoods
where the (self-reported) level of sexual harassment is high, women are around 4 percentage
points less likely to participate in the labour market. The effect is greater for younger
women and for women who observe purdah practice or are victims of domestic violence;
it is smaller for women who would expect to receive a high wage. Evidence suggests safer
streets also increase women’s human capital investments. Muralidharan & Prakash (2017)
raise school enrolment in the Indian state of Bihar by increasing safety on the route to school
through providing girls with a bicycle. Borker (2018) finds that street harassment results
in sub-optimal educational investments: female students at the University of Delhi choose
a substantially worse quality college and spend USD 290 more on travel per year for an
additional standard deviation of safety on their route into college.4
Because street safety is determined at the neighbourhood level, this paper also ties into
the neighbourhood effects literature, which explores why people sort into certain neighbour-
hoods and whether living in a more deprived (or unsafe) neighbourhood affects individual
outcomes. Chakraborty et al. (2018) assume that women living in different neighbourhoods
are directly comparable. this paper contributes to this literature by explicitly controlling for
neighbourhood sorting in the methodology, rather than just in the statistical errors. It recog-
nises that individuals sort into neighbourhoods based on preferences and given constrained
choices (Hedman & van Ham 2011).5
2.2 Female Labour Force Participation
Empirical studies of female labour supply are informed by theoretical determinants of the
reservation and market wages. In Becker’s (1965) time allocation model, women’s reservation
wage is determined by individual and household characteristics, such as their preference for
leisure and the number of young children, and the market wage is determined by individual
characteristics, such as experience and education, and by labour market conditions. By incor-
porating bargaining power, the collective household model provides a better framework for
analysing women’s economic experiences (Browning & Chiappori 1998). Bargaining power
is determined by a woman’s outside option, which may depend on intra-household factors,
such as control over resources, and extra-household factors, including social norms.
4
Equivalent to a 3 percent decrease in reported rapes annually
5
Where the poorest households face the most restrictive choice set.
6
Studies have found several ways to increase FLFP in developing countries: correcting
market failures by providing information about labour market opportunities (Jensen 2012,
Beam 2016) or by improving discrimination and social norms through quotas (Beaman et al.
2009, Bose & Das 2014), role model and peer effects (Field et al. 2015, Ghani et al. 2014),
and targeted policies and training (de Mel et al. 2014); or increasing women’s bargaining
power by giving women control over their potential wages (Field et al. 2019) or cash and
asset transfers (Duflo et al. 2011). Two studies have found job proximity to have a positive
effect on FLFP (Heath & Mobarak 2014, Andrabi et al. 2013). The authors argue that, for
women, commuting is difficult, costly and constrained by social norms. This is of particular
relevance to this paper, under the assumption that street safety during a woman’s commuting
route is they key mechanism through which safety impacts FLFP. In Bangladesh, women
living closer to a garment factory were 6.5 to 14.5 percentage points more likely work (Heath
& Mobarak 2014). In Pakistan, a greater number of local private schools increased female
employment (Andrabi et al. 2013).
The declining FLFP rate in India has inspired a substantial strand of literature (see Klasen
& Pieters (2012, 2015), Kling et al. (2012), Lahoti & Swaminathan (2015), Chaudhary &
Verick (2014), Das et al. (2015), Hirway (2002), Kingdon & Unni (2001)).6 At an individual
level, education is consistently found to have a U-shaped effect on female employment. Social
norms act as a deterrent: using religion and caste as a proxy, Muslim and high-caste Hindu
women have the lowest rates of participation, whilst women who belong to scheduled castes
and tribes (SCST)7 have higher rates of FLFP because of economic necessity (Das 2006) or
because they have weaker ties to traditional society (Luke & Munshi 2011). At a household
level, the presence of young children significantly reduces the probability of women working
and income exerts a negative effect. Some support is found for the ‘added worker’ theorem:
female employment acts as insurance (Attanasio et al. 2005, Klasen & Pieters 2015). FLFP
is lower in northern and eastern regions of India8 (Olsen 2006, Agenor et al. 2015) as well
as in urban area.9 Lahoti & Swaminathan (2015) include labour market conditions and find
that the value share of manufacturing within states has a significant positive effect on FLFP.
Studies of female employment in Indonesia find similar determinants of participation.

Marriage, children and household responsibilities remain the main barriers to labour supply.
Cameron et al. (2018) attribute the stagnation of FLFP to competing supply and demand
trends: more liberal social norms in urban areas are offset by a changing industrial structure,
which has reduced demand for unskilled female labour. Schaner & Das (2016) find that
6
The FLFP rate dropped from 37 percent in 1990 to 28 percent in 2015 (KILM-ILO 2014).
7
SCST refers to several officially recognised groups of historically disadvantaged people in India.
8
Social norms also operate at a regional level: north and east India have greater sexual division of labour,
larger gender gaps in literacy rates, unfavourable female property rights and poor gender ratios (Esteve-Volart
2004).
9
Rural women are concentrated in agriculture.
7
young urban women are substituting into wage employment, whilst young rural women are
substituting out of informal employment. Age displays an inverse U-shaped relationship
with participation, peaking at around 40 (ibid). Alam et al. (2018) finds that religion plays
a role: in urban areas, Hindu women are more likely and Christian women are less likely
to be in the labour force relative to Muslim women. Alisjahbana & Manning (2006) find a
negative income effect. This research informs the selection of confounding variables in my
specification.
3 Data
3.1 IFLS Data
The Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) is a longitudinal survey, established in 1993, of
over 30,000 individuals in 13 of Indonesia’s 27 provinces. IFLS contain detailed information
at the individual, household and community level. This paper makes use of the most recent
wave, IFLS5, which was fielded in 2014/15. Around 1,100 of the households in IFLS5,
comprising 1,531 working age women, are located in Jakarta.10 I use IFLS data because
the geographical disaggregation is sufficiently low to generate variation in neighbourhood
safety data. IFLS reports the third level administrative division (Kecamatan), allowing
computation of an average safety score for each neighbourhood. Jakarta has 44 Kecamatan,
of which my sample covers 42.
3.2 DHS Data
The Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Program comprises seven waves of nationally
representative surveys of over ninety countries. This paper uses data from the most recent
wave (DHS7), collected in India between 2015-16. Whilst DHS primarily contains health
data, it collects basic information on household characteristics, a roster of all household
members and more detailed information for women of reproductive age (15-49).11 The
sample used in this paper is restricted to women living within the administrative boundaries
of Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Kolkata or Bangalore, who have completed the women’s work
module. This leaves a sample of 1,289 women. I use DHS data because it is disaggregated to
a lower administrative level than the city in urban locations. DHS7 India includes GPS data
(longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates) for each cluster of households.12 This GPS data
is subsequently displaced by up to 2km in urban areas to preserve anonymity. ‘Coordinate
scrambling’ induces average distance bias and attenuation bias in estimation results (Elkies
et al. 2015, Mansour et al. 2012); the magnitude of the bias is a decreasing function of the
distance between the survey cluster and the point of interest (Elkies et al. 2015). In this
10
Working age women are defined as 18-58 years old, in line with Indonesia’s retirement age.
11
On health topics, background characteristics, marriage, husband’s background and woman’s work.
12
A cluster is the enumeration area which is typically an apartment or block in urban areas.
8
paper, there are many more points of interest (safety audits) than clusters in the cities, so
these distances are small, and the biases are, therefore, large.
3.3 SafetiPin Data
Safety data come from a mobile app called SafetiPin. SafetiPin was founded in Delhi in
2013, with the aim of making public spaces more inclusive for vulnerable groups, especially
women. The SafetiPin data is partially crowd-sourced and partially collected by trained
auditors. Most major streets and important public spaces, such as transport hubs, parks
and markets are mapped. The contributors audit urban locations based on nine safety pa-
rameters: lighting, openness, visibility, people, security, walk path, public transport, gender
usage and feeling. My benchmark analysis uses an aggregate of all nine parameters, as
discussed below. Safety audits are geo-referenced, allowing me to link them to the DHS
and IFLS datasets based on location. The Safetipin dataset covers Jakarta, Delhi, Mum-
bai, Pune, Kolkata and Bangalore’s metropolitan areas between 2014-2018. In Jakarta, the
safety data comprises about 3,000 different audits; data from the five Indian cities comes
from over 69,000 audits. A safety audit contains a score of 1, 2 or 3 for each of the nine
safety parametres and an aggregate safety score between 0 and 5.
3.4 Variable Definitions and Sample Statistics
Labour Force Participation

The dependent variable in my analysis is labour force participation. In the IFLS sample
I catagorise a woman as being in the labour force if she has worked in the past 12 months,
in the past week, or whether she has a job but did not work in the past week. Similarly,
in the DHS dataset a woman is categorised as being in the labour force if she has worked
during past 12 months or week. In my dataset, the FLFP rate is 54 percent in Jakarta and
22 percent across the five Indian cities. These statistics are similar to the national rates,
which are 53 percent in Indonesia and 21 percent in India. (ILO 2020). Comparatively, the
male labour force participation rates are 82 percent in Indonesia and 75 percent in India
(ILO 2020).
Street Safety
In an ideal study, the treatment variable would be the safety of woman’s real or poten-
tial route to work. Given the constraints of survey data, I proxy the safety of a woman’s
commuting routes with the safety of her neighbourhood. This is akin to measurement error;
the error is inversely related to the proportion of a woman’s commute that includes her
neighbourhood. In India, it does not seem unreasonable to assume that a large fraction of a
women’s commute is through her own neighbourhood: 2011 Census data from India shows
that the proportion of workers who do not travel more than 5 kilometer is almost 70 percent,
and this figure is higher for woman and in urban areas (Singh 2017). It is less reasonable
9
in Jakarta where only 12 percent of commuters travelled less than 10km and a large share
of commuters travel by car (Maimunah & Kaneko 2016). However, given the times that a
woman typically travels through her own neighbourhood, this might be the riskiest part of
her commute.
The treatment, neighbourhood street safety, is an average of the safety scores from each
audit whose coordinates fall within a neighbourhood’s boundaries. It is straightforward to
link SafetiPin to IFLS data as each household’s neighbourhood (Kecamatan) is reported.
Linking safety data to the DHS dataset is more difficult because of DHS’ geographical dis-
placement procedure. I use a similar approach to the IFLS dataset, matching each cluster of
households to a ward (equivalent to a Kecamatan) using the displaced coordinates from the
DHS dataset.13 This does not solve the problems associated with displacement, but rather
converts it into one of point-in-polygon uncertainty: because coordinates are displaced by
up to 2km, some clusters will be assigned to the wrong ward. However, because the neigh-
bourhoods are larger units of analysis, the error is likely to be smaller. As a robustness
check, I re-randomise the coordinates of each cluster by 2km an additional 50 times. This
is discussed in section 4. Figures A1a to A1f (in the appendix) show the safety rating of
each Kecamanten or ward,14 the locations of the safetypin audits and, for the DHS data, the
(observed) locations of the household clusters.
Covariates
The selection of covariates to match on is informed by economic theory, the existing
literature and machine learning techniques (Caliendo & Kopeinig 2005). This is discussed in
further detail in Section 4 (Methodology), below.
Sample statistics for the covariates used for the Indonesian analysis are presented in Table
1.15 Column (1) show statistics for the entire sample, while Columns (2) and (3) show the
disaggregated statistics for women in and out of the labour force, respectively. Columns (5)
and (6) show the statistics for women in ‘high’ and ‘low’ safety neighbourhoods, split at the
median. Columns (4) and (7) show the t-statistics from tests of differences in means between
groups. Across the whole sample, almost three quarters of women have secondary or above
education. Over a third of the sample are Javanese, Indonesia’s largest ethnic group and 29
percent are Betawi, Jakarta’s indigenous ethnic group. 95 percent of respondents are Muslim;
the other 5 percent comprise Christian, Hindu and Buddhist women. Almost 70 percent of
13
Alternatively, I could have matched DHS clusters and SafetiPin audits based on distance. However, if each
cluster of households is matched to the nearest n safety audits based on a maximum geodetic distance, not only
the distances but many of the matches themselves will be incorrect (Elkies et al. 2015). I also conducted my
analysis using this method: each cluster was matched to safety audits within a 4km geodetic distance based
on the observed location of the clusters and an average computed from these matches using inverse distance
weighting. The results were similar.
14
Catagorised as ‘low’, ‘medium’ or ‘high’.
15
Community data comes from the IFLS community module. A woman’s community is the IFLS enumeration
area, which is smaller than her neighbourhood.
10
women are married in my sample. The average household has 7 members. Women in the
labour force are slightly younger, less likely to be married, have less children on average and
live in slightly smaller households. There is a statistically significant difference in education
between women who do and do not work: women in the labour force are more educated.
Among married women, the husbands of those in the labour force also have higher levels of
education, perhaps capturing less restrictive social norms. Interestingly, women in the labour
force are more often less educated than their husbands.16 There is a statistically significant
difference in main ethnicity: women in the labour force are less likely to live in a community
where Betawi or Javanese is the largest ethnic group.17
Ethnicity is the main difference between women in low and high safety neighbourhoods:
in safer neighbourhoods more women are Betawi and less women are Javanese. In contrast,
for women in safer neighbourhoods, Javanese is more frequently the majority ethnicity and
‘Other’ ethnicities are much less likely to be the majority. This may suggest that low safety
neighbourhoods are more segregated by ethnicity. Unsurprisingly, low safety neighbourhoods
have a lower community wealth rating, on average. This is also visible in Figure A1a:
low safety neighbourhoods are located in North and East Jakarta, where the majority of
Jakarta’s kampungs are found (densely populated areas of working-class communities). In
safer neighbourhoods, women and their husbands have slightly higher levels of education on
average, although this is not significant.
Table 2 presents summary statistics for the covariates used in the Indian analysis. The
majority of women have secondary level education or above. Almost half belong to a reserved
catagory.18 The average age is 30. There are less Hindu women and more Muslim women
than in the India as a whole. The average woman lives in a household of almost 6 people and
has more male than female children living with her, perhaps reflecting the ’missing women’
phenomenon (Sen 1992). 57 percent of married women have the same education level as
their spouse, 30 percent have less education and 14 percent have more. Amongst women
participating in the labour force, more have no education and university education, than
their counterparts, reflecting the U-shaped relationship discussed in the literature review.
Women who work are more likely to belong to a SCST/OBC. The average age of women
in the labour force is higher. Only 15 percent of women in the labour force are Muslim,
compared to 24 percent of the women who are not in the labour force. Working women
have half the number of young children under five, but more sons and daughters living with
them.19 Unlike in Indonesia, their husbands are less well educated on average, possibly
16
The reported figures for whether a woman is less or more educated than her spouse are out of the full sample,
so include unmarried women. These women are coded as having the same education level as their spouse.
17
It might be that neighbourhoods with large numbers of working women have a larger demographic of internal
migrants from minority ethnic groups.
18
Scheduled caste or scheduled tribe (SCST) or other backwards caste (OBC)
19
Older children may be acting as caregivers to younger siblings, enabling these women to work.
11
capturing poverty-driven participation.
Women in low and high safety neighbourhoods are more similar than in the IFLS sample.
This is concerning as it might be attributable to noise introduced by DHS’ displacement
procedure. The only significant differences are that more unmarried women live in high safety
neighbourhoods and that more married women have less education than their husbands in
unsafe neighbourhoods. Unsurprisingly, women in high safety neighbourhoods are less likely
to belong to a SCST/OBC and have more education on average, although these differences
are not significant.
12
Table 1: Indonesia (IFLS) Summary Statistics
Entire Labour Force Neighbourhood Street Safety
Sample Status Unadjusted GPS Adjusted

In Out Low High Low High
Means Means Means t-stat Means Means t-stat t-stat t-stat
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
Education
No education 0.06 0.04 0.09 4.2∗∗∗ 0.07 0.05 2.22 -1.65 1.58
Primary education 0.21 0.18 0.24 2.82∗∗ 0.21 0.21 0.15 -0.96 0.73
Secondary education 0.56 0.56 0.54 -0.64 0.54 0.57 -1.45 0.97 -0.6
University education 0.17 0.22 0.12 -4.82∗∗∗ 0.17 0.18 0.36 0.78 -0.97
Ethnicity
Javanese 0.36 0.37 0.34 -1.06 0.39 0.32 3.54 -2.07 ∗ 0.92
Betawi 0.29 0.29 0.29 .08 0.25 0.33 -3.75 2.98∗∗ -1.77
Other 0.36 0.35 0.37 0.98 0.36 0.35 0 -0.79 0.81
Age 35.6 35.2 36.1 1.45 35.3 36.0 -1.59 0.54 0.20
Muslim 0.95 0.96 0.94 -1.22 0.96 0.94 1.28 -1.16 0.74
Married 0.69 0.67 0.71 1.76 0.70 0.68 0.86 0.31 -.17
Household Size 7.2 6.84 7.61 4.07∗∗∗ 7.22 7.16 0.20 -0.63 1.21
Children < 5 0.5 0.47 0.54 1.67 0.54 0.46 1.46 0.65 1.44
Children 5-15 0.91 0.88 0.95 1.26 0.92 0.91 0.10 0.61 1.33
Child Care 0.63 0.58 0.69 2.09∗ 0.66 0.59 0.85 0.69
Spouse’s Education
No education 0.02 0.02 0.02 -0.59 -0.81 0.64
Primary education .09 0.08 0.09 0.35 0.09 .08 0.55 -0.71 0.63
Secondary education 0.34 0.36 0.31 -1.86 0.32 0.35 -1.69 0.81 -0.88
University education 0.08 0.09 0.07 -1.24 0.09 0.07 2.12 -0.24 0.50
Not Applicable 0.48 0.45 0.51 2.40 0.47 0.49 -0.30 -0.03 0.07
Community Wealth 3.77 3.74 3.81 1.48 3.74 3.80 -1.52 0.44 0.27
Main Ethnicity
Javanese 0.52 0.52 0.52 -0.20 0.43 0.62 -6.07 0.11 0.38
Betawi 0.32 0.29 0.34 2.00∗ 0.31 0.32 -2.50 2.98 ∗∗ -3.64 ∗∗∗
Other 0.16 0.18 0.14 -2.25∗ 0.26 0.06 11.8 -6.35∗∗∗ 6.99∗∗∗
More educated .23 0.21 0.27 2.97∗∗ 0.24 0.24 0.30 0.31 -0.22
Less educated .10 0.10 0.10 0.40 0.09 0.11 -1.55 0.47 -.73
Number of Observations 1531 829 702 776 755 776 755
t statistics in parentheses
∗ ∗∗ ∗∗∗
p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001
Notes: ‘Other’ Ethnicities are made up of 26 smaller ethnic groups. The third biggest is Sundanese, which makes up
about 20 percent of my sample. There is no significant difference in the percentage of Sundanese women between low
and high safety neighbourhoods.
‘More’ and ‘Less’ Educated indicate whether a woman is more or less educated than her spouse. The proportions given
are out of the full sample, so include unmarried women.
Community wealth is a measure from 1 to 6 which is contained in the IFLS community module. It was determined by
a local community leader.
Children < 5 contains the number of a woman’s own children who are younger than 5 and children 5-15 is the number
between the ages of 5 and 15. Child care contains the number of children a woman cares for, which may be greater or
less than her own number of children.
13
Table 2: India (DHS) Summary Statistics
Entire Labour Force Neighbourhood Street Safety
Sample Status Unadjusted GPS Adjusted

In Out Low High Low High
Means Means Means t-stat Means Means t-stat t-stat t-stat
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
Education
No education 0.13 0.16 0.12 -1.72 0.14 0.13 0.30 0.47 -0.54
Primary education 0.11 0.11 0.11 -0.03 0.12 0.10 1.43 -0.91 0.86
Secondary education 0.53 0.45 0.56 3.26∗∗∗ 0.52 0.55 -1.31 0.54 -0.47
University education 0.22 0.28 0.21 -2.47∗∗ 0.23 0.22 0.25 -0.30 0.30
SCST / OBC 0.48 0.51 0.47 -1.23 0.50 0.46 1.41 -1.31 1.36
Age 29.95 32.75 29.18 -5.54∗∗∗ 29.96 29.95 -0.04 0.31 -0.24
Religion
Hindu 0.71 0.76 0.70 -1.85 0.71 0.72 -0.44 1.63 -1.62
Muslim 0.23 0.15 0.24 3.69∗∗∗ 0.23 0.23 0.04 -1.00 0.96
Other 0.06 0.09 0.04 -3.14∗∗∗ 0.06 0.05 0.79 -1.22 1.28
Household Size 5.76 5.12 5.94 4.59∗∗∗ 5.70 5.84 -0.80 0.00 -0.33
Children under five 0.46 0.25 0.51 5.04∗∗∗ 0.48 0.43 1.45 -1.24 1.10
Sons in hh 0.72 0.81 0.70 -1.86 0.76 0.69 1.46 -0.84 0.82
Daughters in hh 0.63 0.65 0.63 -0.43 0.64 0.63 0.14 0.01 0.01
Spouse’s Education
No education 0.05 0.07 0.05 -1.41 0.05 0.05 -0.20 0.23 -0.19
Primary education 0.09 0.09 0.09 0.05 0.09 0.08 0.70 -0.27 0.17
Secondary education 0.38 0.33 0.39 2.06∗∗ 0.40 0.35 1.67 -1.05 1.08
University education 0.14 0.13 0.15 0.64 0.15 0.14 0.59 -0.62 0.62
Unmarried 0.34 0.39 0.33 -1.96∗ 0.31 0.37 -2.47∗ 1.66 -1.65
Domestic violence 0.38 0.43 0.36 -1.94 0.39 0.36 1.52 -0.34 0.20
Less educated 0.20 0.18 0.20 0.78 0.22 0.17 2.25∗ -1.93 1.90
More educated 0.09 0.10 0.09 0.37 0.09 0.09 0.40 -0.40 0.46
Number of observations 1,289 180 1,009 656 633 656 633
Notes: The domestic violence measure is a dummy variable, coded as one if a woman answered yes to any of the
questions ”husband is justified in beating his wife if she argues with him / does not cook food properly / goes out
without telling him / neglects the children / refuses to have sex with him”. This measure may proxy social and gender
attitudes.
‘Other’ religions include Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain and Parsi and Zoroastrian women.
SCST/OBC refers to women belonging to scheduled caste or scheduled tribe (SCST) or other backwards caste (OBC).
14
4 Methodology
This paper aims to establish the causal impact of street safety on the probability of a
woman participating in the labour force. Due to data limitations discussed below, I estimate
the causal effects of street safety in a woman’s neighbourhood, rather than safety along her
commuting route, on her employment choice. In an ideal study, women would be randomly
assigned across different treatment dosages; using observational data, the study design must
overcome issues of selection bias. Women self-select into a neighbourhood and this will de-
pend on a range of individual and household level preferences and characteristics. Therefore,
the sample living in safe neighbourhoods may well differ in respects relevant to labour force
participation to the sample living in unsafe neighbourhoods; Tables 1 and 2 suggest that
this is true for ethnicity and education, for instance. Presenting evidence of neighbourhood
effects without dealing with selection bias, will lead to erroneous results (van Ham & Manley
2012). Multivariate regression analysis will not fully account for selection bias.
This paper uses propensity score matching to balance the observable characteristics of
women in neighbourhoods with different safety scores. Specifically, I estimate a dose response
function using the Generalised Propensity Score (GPS) (Guardabascio & Ventura 2014, Hi-
rano & Imbens 2005). The precise research question is, how does the estimated probability
of labour force participation change as the ‘dosage’ of neighbourhood safety increases? The
GPS allows for a continuous rather than binary or discrete ordered treatment. This method
was selected because the treatment, street safety, is a continuous variable between 0 and
5. As with standard propensity score matching, conditioning on the GPS can remove se-
lection bias associated with differences in observable covariates. The GPS, therefore, allows
plausible identification of causal impact if (a) the correct selection of these observables is
made (Guardabascio & Ventura 2014) and (b) there is no selection bias from unobserved
covariates. The likelihood of (a) and (b) holding, in this paper, is discussed below.
The observable covariates are presented above in Tables 1 and 2. The selection of these
covariates was informed by economic theory, literature and machine-learning techniques.
I choose to always include education, age and whether the respondent is married in my
specification. Education and age (as a proxy for experience) capture key elements of a
woman’s market wage and the married dummy is a determinant of her reservation wage.
There is precedent for using all three as determinants of self selection into neighbourhoods
(Brown & Moore 1970). Given the large number of potentially relevant variables in both the
IFLS and DHS datasets, the sparsity of literature about neighbourhood safety and following
15
the recommendations of Imbens (2014), I use data driven methods to select the rest of the
20
confounding variables. Following the recommendations of Belloni et al. (2013), I use a
double selection procedure: first fitting a model for the outcome using Lasso; secondly, fitting
a model for the treatment using Lasso; and, finally, selecting as my confounders the union
of these two sets of covariates. I exclude financial variables because of endogeneity concerns.
It is possible that despite careful attempts to eliminate bias, the impact of omitted unob-
served and unobservable variables on street safety could violate the conditional unconfound-
edness assumption. I check the sensitivity of the estimated ATTs to unobserved heterogeneity
using a Rosenbaum bounds test (Rosenbaum 2005) (More details of this test are given in
Section 6).The results are extremely sensitive to the influence of unobserved variables. This
is a major limitation of the study, which must be considered when interpreting the results.
The formal analytical framework is as follows:
The potential outcomes, Yi (t), exist over a treatment space t ∈ Υ, where Υ represents the
continuous set of potential treatments in the interval [0, 5]. I am interested in estimating the
average dose-response function, µ(t) = E[Yi (t)]. For each woman in my sample I observe the
outcome, Yi = Yi (Ti ) (whether or not woman i participated in the labour force), the ‘dosage’
of neighbourhood safety, Ti ∈ [0, 5], and a vector of individual, household and neighbourhood
level characteristics, X i , that affect both treatment assignment and the outcome.
Rosenbaum & Rubin’s (1983) assumption of weak unconfoundedness can be generalised
to the continuous case:
(Y i ⊥ Ti ) | X i for all t∈Υ (1)
This stipulates that, given a set of observable covariates Xi , which are unaffected by treat-
ment, potential outcomes are independent of treatment dosage. A potential limitation of this
paper is that Assumption 1 may not hold: whilst I am able to control for a range of observ-
able characteristics, there is the possibility that unobservable characteristics also determine
selection into neighbourhoods, violating conditional unconfoundedness. For example, women
may choose to live in a neighbourhood because of peer networks and opportunities.21 Match-
ing methods require two further identifying assumptions: the Stable Unit Treatment Value
20
Specifically, I use adaptive Lasso, which is preferable for model selection as it posses the ‘oracle’ quality (Zou
2006) and selects fewer covariates; CV-based lasso tends to overselect (Zou 2006, Caliendo & Kopeinig 2005)
21
Arguably, this is correlated with neighbourhood wealth, which I control for. This is supported by van Ham &
Manley’s (2012) finding that poorer neighbourhoods have a much higher residential turnover, suggesting weaker
networks.
16
Assumption (SUTVA) and the overlap assumption. Treatment assignment is at the neigh-
bourhood level so if externalities exist between neighbourhoods, there will be interference
and SUTVA will be violated. This is what Baylis & Ham (2015) call ‘between’ spillovers of
which spatial correlation is one possibility. Spatial correlation in the outcome variable may
lead to interference but this is not the case for spatial correlation in unobservables, which
22
only results in noisier estimates (Baylis & Ham 2015). In a dose response framework,
the common support region for each interval of treatment is determined by comparing the
distribution of the GPS for the units in an interval with individuals not in that interval,
which is an extension of Dehejia & Wahba’s (1998) procedure. There is a clear region of
common support in my study.
Conditioning on the GPS circumvents problems of dimensionality. The GPS is the prob-
ability that a woman with a given set of characteristics, X i , receives a certain ‘dosage’ of
street safety. Hirano & Imbens (2005) show that the GPS displays the balancing property:
within a strata of observations with a similar value of GPS, the probability that T = t does
not depend on the value of the covariates. If weak unconfoundedness holds, the GPS can
be used to eliminate selection bias associated with differences in the covariates (Hirano &
Imbens 2005). Formally:
fT (t|r(t, Xi ), Y (t)) = fT (t|r(t, Xi )) (2)
where r(t, Xi ) is the GPS.
To test pre-matching balance, I split the treatment variable into two ordered categories,
reflecting safety dosages less than and greater than the median.2324 The t-statistics from
two-sample t-tests of covariates by treatment category are presented in Tables 1 and 2 in col-
umn (7). This reveals that before GPS-matching, 5 of 25 covariates are not balanced across
groups in the IFLS sample at the 5 percent level. These variables are no education, own
ethnicity is Javanese and Betawi, main ethnicity is Javanese, Betawi and Other. Spouse’s
education (none and university) is significantly different at the 10 percent level. In the DHS
sample, 2 of 21 covariates are not balanced. These variables are whether a woman is un-
married and whether she is less educated than her spouse. Spouse’s education (secondary)
is significantly different at the 10 percent level. Demographic and socioeconomic character-

22
There does not appear to be spatial correlation in my outcome variable: in all 6 cities, Moran’s I statistic (a
measure of spatial autocorrelation) for FLFP is approximately zero and extremely insignificant (p-value=1)
23
In the DHS sample the median is 3.54 and in the IFLS sample it is 2.74 out of a maximum of 5.
24
I also try an alternative categorization using tertiles. Due to reduced sample size, this is harder to balance.
17
istics like education, ethnicity and marital status are typically found to be determinants of
neighbourhood sorting (van Ham & Manley 2012).
To estimate the dose response function, I first construct the GPS using a generalized linear
25
model. My treatment variable, street safety, is not normally distributed so I follow the
semi-parametric method developed by Bia et al. (2014) and use a gamma distribution with
a logarithmic link function. The balancing property is then assessed by ‘blocking’ on the
GPS, as suggested by Hirano & Imbens (2005). I classify observations into four equally
sized strata, based on their estimated GPS (Rosenbaum & Rubin 1983).26 After stratifying
the cases by the GPS, the covariates were assessed for balance between the two treatment
categories. In the event that the balancing property was not satisfied, I added additional
interaction terms until balance was achieved.27 In the final specification, I achieved balance
on all covariates in the DHS sample as shown in columns (8) and (9). However, in the IFLS
sample I am unable to achieve balance on the main ethnicity variables. This is case for all
possible combinations of interactions and second order terms. This is not a major concern
as ethnicity is not a significant determinant of FLFP in my sample.28
The final step is estimating the dose response: the stratum based probability that a
woman participates in the workforce, for each dosage of neighbourhood safety (Hirano &
Imbens 2005). To do so, I first estimate the conditional expectation of participating in the
labour force, as a function of the street safety dosage, Ti , and the GPS, Ri :
β(t, r) = E{Yi (t) | r(t, Xi ) = r} = E(Yi | Ti = t, Ri = r) (3)
For the IFLS sample, the specification with the most explanatory power is linear in both
GPS and treatment (4); in the DHS sample it is cubic in treatment and linear in GPS (5).
I use a probit regression for both:
E(Y | Ti , Ri ) = P (Y = 1 | Ti , Ri ) = Φ(β0 + β1 Ti + β2 Ri ) (4)
E(Y | Ti , Ri ) = P (Y = 1 | Ti , Ri ) = Φ(β0 + β1 Ti + β2 Ti2 + β3 Ti3 + β4 Ri ) (5)
The entire dose response function can then be obtained by estimating the average po-
25
The assumption of normality is not statistically satisfied at 0.05 level
26
Four strata achieved the best balance.
27
In the IFLS sample, I added twelve interaction terms and, in the DHS sample, six.
28
In a simple probit regression of labour force participation on the vector of controls, ethnicity is not statistically
significant. Of the main ethnicity variables, only Javanese is significant, which is balanced between groups.
Moreover, the dose response function is robust to excluding ethnicity variables.
18
tential outcome at every level of treatment. In my specification, I use bootstrap standard
errors that take into account that the GPS and the parametres of the GPS and treatment
variables are estimated.
5 Results
As set out in the Methodology section, selection on unobservables is a major weakness of
this study and should be considered when interpreting the results below.
5.1 Indonesia
Baseline Specification
Table 5 in Appendix A.2 presents results from a multivariate probit regression of labour
force participation on street safety and the selected covariates, for both the IFLS and DHS
samples. For the sake of brevity, the coefficients on the covariates are not reported. Columns
(1) and (3) report the predicted probability that a woman participates is in the labour force
in low, medium and high safety neighbourhoods and the t-statistics.29 The standard errors
are clustered at the neighbourhood level, as this is the level at which women are ‘assigned
to the treatment’. Columns (2) and (4) report the change in the probability of participation
in medium and high relative to low safety neighbourhoods.30
In Indonesia, I find that women in medium safety neighbourhoods are 3.6 percentage
points more likely and women in high safety neighbourhoods are 9.1 percentage points more
likely to participate in the labour force relative to women in low safety neighbourhoods.
Both estimates are statistically significant at the 1 percent level. The probit estimates
are slightly larger than the treatment effects estimated using GPS matching, suggesting
that selection bias overstates the treatment effect; multivariate regression may not fully
control for characteristics that are correlated with labour force participation in high safety
neighbourhoods. The magnitude of thes
Dose Response Results
The results from the dose response analysis are presented in Table 3. As in Table A1, I
present the predicted probability of labour force participation by neighbourhood street safety
categorisation (low, medium and high) and the change in this probability for women living
in medium and high relative to a low safety neighbourhood. Again, the standard errors
29
Low medium and high are the tertiles of safety score. I have presented the estimates using this catagorisation
of neighbourhood safety for ease of interpretation.
30
Significance is determined using a chi-square test.
19
Table 3: Estimated Treatment Effects of Street Safety on Labour Force Participation
Indonesia (IFLS) India (DHS)
Pr(Work) ATT Pr(Work) ATT

Low Safety 0.501∗∗∗ - 0.244∗∗∗ -
(23.03) (11.15)
Medium Safety 0.539∗∗∗ 0.038∗∗ 0.217∗∗∗ -0.027
(30.57) (15.74)
High Safety 0.586∗∗∗ 0.085∗∗∗ 0.193∗∗∗ -0.051
(21.98) (9.18)
N 1481 1284
∗ ∗∗ ∗∗∗
Notes: t statistics in parentheses. p < 0.05, p < 0.01, p < 0.001
IFLS: Low safety neighbourhoods have safety scores between 1.42 and 2.30. Medium have scores between
2.32 and 3.22. High have scores between 3.35 and 4.50.
DHS: Low safety neighbourhoods have safety scores between 0.81 and 3.24. Medium have scores between
3.26 and 3.77. High have scores between 3.80 and 4.73.
are clustered at the neighbourhood level. Figures 1 and 2 present dose-response curves and
their derivatives (treatment effect curves). The dose response curve shows the estimated
probability of labour force participation at every treatment dosage. The treatment effect
curve shows the ATT given a one unit increase in the neighbourhood safety score. Both
graphs show the 95 percent confidence intervals, calculated with bootstrapped standard
errors. The estimated ATT at the extremes of treatment dosage should be viewed with
caution, as the sample size is very small.
p0.1p0.8 In Indonesia, there is a large, positive and statistically significant treatment
effect. The ATT for women in medium safety neighbourhoods is 3.8 percentage points, and
in high safety neighbourhoods the ATT is 8.5 percentage points, taking low safety as the
control. These are significant at the 1 percent and 0.1 percent levels, respectively.31 Figure 1
shows that the estimated probability of participation is a monotonically increasing function
of street safety, with reasonably tight confidence intervals. Ninety percent of observations
have a safety score between 1.64 and 4.5 in Indonesia. Within this range, treatment effects
reflect the magnitude of the ATTs in Table 3.
5.2 India
Baseline Specification
In India, the probit estimates show that the probability of labour force participation falls
as neighbourhood street safety increases, although these estimates are not significant. Women
in medium safety neighbourhoods are 2.6 percentage points less likely work and women in
31
Determined by chi-square tests.
20
high safety neighbourhoods are 3.1 percentage points less likely to work relative to women in
low safety neighbourhoods. The literature on female labour force participation has found a
significant income effect, with women in richer household’s substituting towards leisure. This
may be driving the negative results as I do not include a control for household income.32
A second and very plausible explanation is that some women are incorrectly matched to
neighbourhoods because of DHS’ geographical displacement and this measurement error is
leading to attenuation bias. This will also be an issue for the matching estimates.
Dose Response Function
For the Indian sample, the ATTs are insignificant at all conventional levels of significance:
Table 3 shows the ATT is 2.7 percentage points in medium and by 5.1 percentage points in
high, relative to low safety neighbourhoods. The treatment effect function in Figure 2 shows
that, for safety scores between 2 and 4.5 the treatment effect is quite precisely estimated,
but is still not statistically different from zero. Given the context of very low rates of labour
force participation and high incidence of violence against women, I had expected to see
larger treatment results in India than Indonesia. The lack of results could be because of
the income effect. However, the results from two alternative specification which achieve
balance on income are very similar.33 Furthermore, the GPS coefficient in the estimated
probit regression is not significantly different from zero, suggesting either that there was
limited selection bias or that the propensity score is poorly estimated. Owing to the DHS
displacement procedure, the latter case seems probable. This is a documented problem
with using geospatial DHS data in urban areas: Burgert-Brucker et al. (2016) find that
the displacement procedure masks substantial heterogeneities in health and development
indicators across small distances in cities, leading to estimates close to zero.
5.3 Heterogeneity Analysis
Indonesia: Age, Education, Religion and Wealth
I consider heterogeneous treatment effects for four groups of Indonesian women: women
below the age of 25; women with primary or below education, women who consider themselves
to be religious and women from rich households.34 My hypothesis is that there will be
larger treatment effects for these groups of women. Younger women are often the targets of
street harassment and are less experienced at handling it (Borker 2018). Women from more
32
However, husband’s education should be a reasonable proxy.
33
The first includes whether or not the respondent’s household is categorised as ’richer’ or ’richest’, the second
includes whether or not the respondent’s household is ’poorer’ or ’poorest’.
34
Defined as top 20 percent of wealth scores.
21
Figure 1: Indonesia (IFLS) Dose Response Results
Figure 2: India (DHS) Dose Response Results: Women
Figure 3: Dose Response Functions for Heterogeneous Groups of Women
22
conservative social groups, which I proxy with religious devoutness, may face greater costs
of sexual harassment and assault (Chakraborty et al. 2018). Becker et al. (2011) find that
people with lower levels of education change their behaviour more radically in response to
fear. For richer women, it is less likely that the benefits of work are sufficient to invest in
overcoming fear.35
I estimate the dose response function, using the main specification, separately for these
four groups of women. The left panel of Figure 3 shows the dose response functions for these
groups of women and the full sample for comparison. I find that treatment effects (given by
the slope of the dose response curves) are larger for younger and richer women, very similar
for more religious women and smaller for less educated women.36
India: Age, Education, Caste, Religion and Wealth
In the Indian sample, I look at heterogeneous treatment effects for women below the
age of 25, high caste women, Muslim women, women with primary or below education and
rich women. The right hand panel of Figure 3 shows the separate dose response functions
for these groups of women. The treatment effects are all insignificant except for high caste
Hindu women, for whom it is positive and weakly significant (at the 10 percent level) as
neighbourhood street safety increases from low to medium. For young, Muslim, less educated
women and richer women the dose response functions are imprecisely estimated and the
treatment effects are not statistically different from zero.
5.4 Robustness Checks
I carry out a series of robustness checks that examine whether the relationship between safer
streets and women’s labor force participation persists after alterations of the estimation
sample, empirical specification and variable definitions. For the IFLS sample, I find the
positive relationship to be robust.
Rosenbaum Bounds Test
As mentioned in Section 4, I conducted a Rosenbaum bounds test for unconfoundedness
(Rosenbaum 2005). I do this using a binary treatment and propensity score matching, as this
procedure is not available after the dose response. In the IFLS sample, I find that increas-
ing the influence of unobservables by a factor of 1.1 would render my ATTs insignificant,
suggesting I have overestimated the ATT. In other words, after controlling for observable
35
Alternatively, these women may find it easier to avoid risk by travelling in private transport.
36
The estimated treatment effect for less educated women is not significant, for for religious women it is
significant at the 5 percent leve, for ’Other’ ethnicities it is significant at the 1 percent and for younger and for
richer women it is significant 0.1 percent level
23
characteristics a woman in the labour force is 10 percent more likely to live in a high safety
neighbourhood. This could be the result of peer and network effects. In the DHS sample,
because I found a negative effect, I am interested in whether I have underestimated the ATT.
This is the case if women in the workforce are less likely to live in high safety neighbour-
37
hoods, after controlling for observables. I find that if the influence of unobservables on
treatment assignment is 1.5, the ATT would be positive and significant.38
Male labour force participation
It is also possible that the measure of street safety is correlated with unobserved neigh-
bourhood characteristics that determine both male and female labour force participation and
that that this is driving the positive treatment effect in the IFLS sample. For example, unsafe
neighbourhoods may have an underdeveloped labour market, poor public transport or more
(gender-neutral) crime. As evidence that this is not the case, I conduct the same analysis for
working age men in Jakarta, using the main specification.39 The estimated treatment effects
are negative and insignificant, suggesting the SafetiPin street safety measure is successful in
capturing the effect of gender-based street harassment and not of unobservables that affect
both male and female employment.
Ordinal Treatment Groups
I conduct the analysis using three ordinal treatment groups (low, medium and high safety
neighbourhoods) and binary treatment groups (low and high) in place of the continuous
safety score. This allows me to use standard matching methods rather than a dose response
function.40
Table 4 shows three sets of matching estimates of the ATTs, conducted separately for the
IFLS and DHS samples. Each set of estimates matches on the full set of controls used in
the main specification. The first set of estimates use standard propensity score matching,
which does not support multiple treatment analysis. They are included to allow comparison
with the AIPW and IPWRA estimates: similarity of the estimates for the binary treatment
justifies using weighting for the tertiary treatment specification.41 . Propensity score match-
ing yields an ATT of 6.6 percentage points in the IFLS sample, which is very similar to the
37
In India, this might be the case where poverty is driving labour force participation.
38
This is the case even when I include household income as a confounding variable.
39
I am unable to do this using the DHS sample as data about men’s work are not available.
40
For the tertiary treatment, I split the sample into tertiles based on their average safety score. For the binary
treatment, I split the sample at the median safety score.
41
I also conducted nearest neighbour caliper radius matching for the binary treatment but do not include these
results. This yielded an ATT of 4.5 percentage points in the IFLS sample, which was significant at the 5 percent
level. In the DHS sample, nearest neighbour matching estimated a statistically insignificant ATT of -0.036.
24
Table 4: Treatment Effects for Ordinal Treatment Groups
ATE (1) (2) (3) (1) (2) (3)

PSM AIPW IPWRA PSM AIPW IPWRA
Binary Treatment
High vs Low 0.0655∗ 0.0698∗ 0.0663∗ -0.022 -0.032 -0.031
(2.05) (2.11) (2.07) (-0.82) (-1.37) ( -1.35)
Tertiary Treatment
Medium vs Low - -0.021 -0.016 - -0.015 -0.014
(-0.54) (-0.41) (-0.55) (-0.51)
High vs Low - 0.109∗ 0.111∗ - -0.056∗ -0.054
(2.93) (2.99) (-1.97) (-1.94)
N 1474 1481 1481 1284 1284 1284
∗
p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01, ∗∗∗ p < 0.001
Notes: (1) PSM: Propensity Score Matching using a probit model for outcome and treatment (2) AIPW: Augmented
Inverse Probability Weighting using a probit model for binary and a multinomial logit for tertiary treatments and a probit
model for the outcome (3) IPWRA: Inverse Probability Weighting Regression Adjustment with a probit model for binary
and a multinomial logit for tertiary treatments with a probit model for the outcome. Seven observations were dropped
in estimating (1) for the IFLS sample as they did not meet the overlap assumption. Standard errors are clustered at the
neighbourhood level for AIPW and IPWRA estimates. This was not possible for propensity score matching; these standard
errors are robust.
AIPW and IPWRA estimates.42
The second set of estimate uses augmented inverse probability weighting (AIPW). An ad-
vantage of this method is that it is doubly robust: both treatment and outcome models are
specified, but only one of the models must be correct to consistently estimate the treatment
effects. IPWRA is also doubly robust. Focusing on the tertiary treatment estimates for
the IFLS sample, the ATT of living in a medium safety neighbourhood is not statistically
different from zero but the ATT of living in a high safety neighbourhood is 10.9 percentage
points, which is slightly larger than the main specification. For the DHS sample, the esti-
mated ATT for medium safety neighbourhoods is negative and insignificant; for high safety
neighbourhoods it is around -5.6 percentage points and weakly significant; comparable to the
main specification. The third of estimates uses inverse probability weighting with regression
adjustment (IPWRA) and produces very similar estimates to AIPW. Taken together, these
results are encouraging evidence that the main results presented in this paper are robust to
different specifications.
IFLS: Alternative Definitions of Work and Street Safety
I re-estimate the main specification using an alternative definition of labour force partic-
42
Given the binary definition of the treatment variable, it is unsurprising that this estimate is smaller than in
the main specification.
25
ipation.43 Only women who are government workers, private workers and causal workers are
defined as being in the labour force because the majority of these women will work outside
their homes (Siddique 2018). Women who are self-employed or unpaid family workers are
categorised as being out of the labour force, as they are more likely to work at home. As
expected, the results are slightly larger than the main specification: the ATT of living in a
medium relative to a low safety neighbourhood is 4.2 percentage points, and of living in a
high relative to low safety neighbourhood is 10.5 percentage points.44
Secondly, I redefine street safety, constructing an average of five of the nine parameters:
45
lighting, people, security, visibility and feeling. Notably, I exclude gender-usage as this
may be endogenous. The estimated treatment effects are similar: the ATT of living in a
medium safety neighbourhood is 3.5 percentage points and significant at 5 percent; the ATT
of living in a high safety neighbourhood is 7.5 percentage points, significant at the 1 percent
level.
DHS: Re-Displacement of Coordinates
The major limitation of the Indian analysis is that sufficiently displaced households will
be assigned to an incorrect neighbourhood and, therefore, an incorrect treatment dosage.
To gain a better understanding of the impacts of displacement, I re-displace each cluster of
households an additional 50 times using DHS’ replicable and symmetric procedure. Treating
the observed coordinates in the DHS sample as ‘true’, I find that each cluster is assigned
to a ‘wrong’ neighbourhood an average of 22.5 percent of the time. The error appears to
be random: half of the incorrectly assigned clusters have a safety score higher than the
true score; half have a lower score.46 The average difference between the true and assigned
safety score is very close to zero (0.03) and the mean absolute difference is relatively small
(0.363). This magnitude reflects the high level of spatial correlation visible in the maps in
the appendix. Whilst the measurement error is not substantial it will bias the estimates
towards zero and reduce precision. To assess the effect of the (random) measurement error
on my results, I conduct my main analysis on all 50 samples.47 For clarity I do not present
all the estimates; Figure A3 shows the predicted probabilities of labour force participation
for eight of the of these 50 samples. It is fairly consistent across treatment groups: low safety
43
The analysis is limited to women with non-missing data, which leaves me with a sample size of 1051. There
is no employment sector variable in the DHS dataset.
44
The results are significant at 5 and 1 percent respectively.
45
a measure of how many women relative to women are commonly found in the area
46
49.16 percent and 50.84 percent respectively.
47
These were randomly selected.
26
neighbourhoods have higher participation, although the differences between groups are not
significant.
6 Conclusion
This paper set out to investigate the impact of street safety on female labour force partici-
pation in India and Indonesia. Several features set it apart from the existing literature: it is
the first study to use generalised propensity score methods to control for self-selection into
safer neighbourhoods; it is the only existing empirical study of street safety in Indonesia;
and, it uses a novel dataset from the mobile app SafetiPin to construct the treatment vari-
able. The results from the analysis of Jakarta suggest that safer streets have a substantial
positive treatment effect on female employment. Using a dose response framework, I find
that women living in the safest tertile of neighbourhoods in my study are 8.5 percentage
points more likely to participate in the workforce. This figure is robust to alternative defi-
nitions of the outcome and treatment variables and different matching specifications. These
results suggest that harassment and sexual assault in public spaces is a mechanism that could
perpetuate economic inequality between men and women.
As discussed, the main threat to identification in this paper is that the unconfoundedness
assumption is not clearly met. This problem has garnered substantial discussion in the
neighbourhood effects literature but no clear solutions. It presents a substantial challenge
for future studies of street safety. Moreover, the analysis of Indian cities does not provide
conclusive results, which is the second major limitation of this paper. I posit that this
is a feature of DHS’ coordinate displacement procedure and test this by re-randomising
coordinates an additional 50 times. I find that coordinate scrambling introduces substantial
measurement error in my analysis, biasing the treatment effects towards zero. India is
an extremely relevant context for this paper because female employment is low and street
harassment is endemic. Therefore, one avenue for further study is to re-estimate the impact
of street safety on FLFP in India using geographically accurate data. Moreover, studies of
additional countries in South Asia and in the MENA region are needed as these countries
typically have low levels of female employment and unequal gender attitudes.
Female labour force participation has both instrumental and intrinsic value: increasing the
number of women in the labour force has desirable economic consequences and is essential
to female empowerment. These findings have important policy implications. The first-best
policy response is making public spaces safe and inclusive of women. Borker (2018) finds a
27
harassment-free city would reduce human-capital and travel cost inequalities between men
and women in her study. Eliminating harassment and assault is an ambitious long-term
goal that can only be achieved through transforming social norms and implementing legal
protections. The latter relies on victims being able to report incidents without stigma,
which might be attained through female leadership: in India, Iyer et al. (2012) find that
the presence of female leaders substantially increased the number of reported crimes against
women. Bicycles (Muralidharan & Prakash 2017) and female-only public transport (Aguilar
et al. 2016) are shorter term solutions that can improve travel safety for women and girls. An
alternative policy lever could equip women to fight harassment, changing their perception
of safety. This is the aim of organisations like SheFighter in Egypt, which provides self-
defence training and of initiatives to reclaim public spaces like Hollaback’s global ‘Chalk
Walks’. Finding cost-effective interventions to reduce harassment is a fruitful future avenue
of research that has the potential to unlock economic growth and reduce gender disparities.
28
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35
A Appendix
A.1 Street Safety Maps (2014-18)48
Figure A.1a: Street Safety in Jakarta Figure A.1b: Street Safety in Delhi
Figure A.1d: Street Safety in Ben-

Figure A.1c: Street Safety in Mumbai galuru
Figure A.1e: Street Safety in Kolkata Figure A.1f: Street Safety in Pune
48
Safety audits are not shown on the map of Delhi, as due to the large quantity they obscured the neighbourhood
safety categorisation. The map for Kolkata missing some wards due to inaccuracies in the shape file.
36
A.2 Results
Table 5: IFLS5 Probit Regression
Pr(Work) ATT Pr(Work) ATT

∗∗∗ ∗∗∗
Low Safety 0.499 - 0.237 -
(22.26) (13.42)
Medium Safety 0.537∗∗∗ 0.036∗∗ 0.211∗∗∗ -0.026

(30.62) (18.03)
High Safety 0.590∗∗∗ 0.091∗∗ 0.206∗∗∗ 0.031

(23.07) (12.58)
N 1531 1284
∗
p < 0.05, ∗∗ p < 0.01, ∗∗∗ p < 0.001
Figure A.2: Predicted Probabilities of Labour Force Participation in 8 of the 50 re-randomised

samples
37

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Do Safer Streets Increase Female Labour Force Participation?

Evidence from India and Indonesia.

August 17, 2023

2.1 Street Safety

2.2 Female Labour Force Participation

Studies of female employment in Indonesia find similar determinants of participation.

3.1 IFLS Data

3.2 DHS Data

3.3 SafetiPin Data

3.4 Variable Definitions and Sample Statistics

Labour Force Participation

capturing poverty-driven participation.

Table 1: Indonesia (IFLS) Summary Statistics

Entire Labour Force Neighbourhood Street Safety

Sample Status Unadjusted GPS Adjusted

Table 2: India (DHS) Summary Statistics

Entire Labour Force Neighbourhood Street Safety

Sample Status Unadjusted GPS Adjusted

covariates was informed by economic theory, literature and machine-learning techniques.

The formal analytical framework is as follows:

Rosenbaum & Rubin’s (1983) assumption of weak unconfoundedness can be generalised

to the continuous case:

(Y i ⊥ Ti ) | X i for all t∈Υ (1)

selection into neighbourhoods, violating conditional unconfoundedness. For example, women

bourhood level so if externalities exist between neighbourhoods, there will be interference

common support in my study.

Imbens 2005). Formally:

fT (t|r(t, Xi ), Y (t)) = fT (t|r(t, Xi )) (2)

where r(t, Xi ) is the GPS.

is significantly different at the 10 percent level. Demographic and socioeconomic character-

neighbourhood sorting (van Ham & Manley 2012).

as ethnicity is not a significant determinant of FLFP in my sample.28

β(t, r) = E{Yi (t) | r(t, Xi ) = r} = E(Yi | Ti = t, Ri = r) (3)

I use a probit regression for both:

E(Y | Ti , Ri ) = P (Y = 1 | Ti , Ri ) = Φ(β0 + β1 Ti + β2 Ri ) (4)

E(Y | Ti , Ri ) = P (Y = 1 | Ti , Ri ) = Φ(β0 + β1 Ti + β2 Ti2 + β3 Ti3 + β4 Ri ) (5)

tential outcome at every level of treatment. In my specification, I use bootstrap standard

variables are estimated.

As set out in the Methodology section, selection on unobservables is a major weakness of

in medium and high relative to low safety neighbourhoods.30

neighbourhoods. The magnitude of thes

Dose Response Results

Table 3: Estimated Treatment Effects of Street Safety on Labour Force Participation

Indonesia (IFLS) India (DHS)

Pr(Work) ATT Pr(Work) ATT

caution, as the sample size is very small.

p0.1p0.8 In Indonesia, there is a large, positive and statistically significant treatment

shows that the estimated probability of participation is a monotonically increasing function

reflect the magnitude of the ATTs in Table 3.

neighbourhoods because of DHS’ geographical displacement and this measurement error is

Dose Response Function

the displacement procedure masks substantial heterogeneities in health and development

indicators across small distances in cities, leading to estimates close to zero.

5.3 Heterogeneity Analysis

Indonesia: Age, Education, Religion and Wealth

Figure 1: Indonesia (IFLS) Dose Response Results

Figure 2: India (DHS) Dose Response Results: Women

Figure 3: Dose Response Functions for Heterogeneous Groups of Women

India: Age, Education, Caste, Religion and Wealth

treatment effects are not statistically different from zero.

5.4 Robustness Checks

positive relationship to be robust.