Online Food Delivery Platforms and Female Labor Force Participation

The literature often explains female labor force participation through factors such as schooling, wage gaps, and fertility. In this study, we identify how technology induced time savings from household chores increase female labor force participation in South Korea. Using a leads-and-lags difference-in-differences model, we find that entry of an online food delivery platform significantly increased the female employment rate in the three years following the platform's entry, and the results still hold after excluding employment in the food and beverage sector. Our further analyses show that such digital platforms offered a pathway for women to break free from traditional household roles, thus granting them more time and the opportunity to decide whether to join the labor market or stay at home. We examine the positive externalities generated by the online food delivery platform and find that this new technology-induced female employment accounted for 0.27% of South Korea's GDP, or 17 times the platform's direct revenue.