A STUDY OF SOCIO DEMOGRAPHICS FACTORS AFFECTING INCOME OF WOMEN IN INFORMAL SECTOR IN RAIPUR CITY

Abstract

When people lose their jobs in the formal economy they still have to make ends meet. The informal sector is often described as a shock absorber during economic downturns for people retrenched from formal employment. In times of recession, „new entrants‟ join the informal economy – people who lost their jobs in the formal sector, now try to make ends meet by taking up an activity in the informal economy. This was well documented following the Asian economic crisis in 1997, when numbers of retrenched formal workers found work in the informal economy. But this is an incomplete picture. The informal economy is well integrated into the formal world economy through its direct provision of production, products and other services to global value chains. Therefore, when there is an economic downturn in the formal sector, the informal sector suffers too. For example, when there is a recession in the United States, leading to a decrease in demand for imported clothing, informal workers in the textile sector in Thailand producing for Thai exporters to US markets may lose their informal jobs.