The rapid expansion of platform-mediated gig work, such as food delivery and ridesharing, has transformed labor markets across the globe. While much of the existing literature focuses on the flexibility and income benefits of gig work in developed countries, less is known about its broader societal implications in emerging economies. Beatriz Rache’s research investigates how the availability of low-skill gig work affects educational attainment and labor market outcomes in Brazil, particularly among youth in low-income settings. Her research project, “Delivering Change: The Educational and Labor Market Effects of Gig Work,” explores whether the rise of gig platforms alters the schooling and employment decisions of marginal students.

Rache’s empirical strategy relies on a difference-in-differences approach, leveraging the staggered rollout of food delivery platforms across Brazilian municipalities as a natural experiment. She compiled a timeline of platform expansion using archived versions of company websites and matched this with municipality-level data on educational and labor market indicators. However, early analysis revealed limitations in the geographic and temporal granularity of the data, which hindered the ability to establish parallel pre-trends.

With support from the CGM, Rache acquired a permanent Stata license, enabling her to implement advanced econometric techniques, including recent developments in staggered treatment designs. She also presented her preliminary findings at two academic conferences: Doctorissimes at the Paris School of Economics and the IZA Ph.D. Workshop in Labor and Behavioral Economics in Bonn, Germany. These engagements provided valuable feedback and helped refine the research direction.

To address the limitations of the initial approach, Rache is now pursuing two complementary data strategies. First, she has applied for access to student-level microdata from Brazil’s Education Census, which includes detailed information on students’ grade level, age, gender, parental background and self-reported work status. This will allow her to examine educational outcomes and labor force participation at the individual level, with a rich array of controls. Second, she is awaiting the release of the 2022 Brazilian Demographic Census microdata, which will offer a nationally representative snapshot of educational attainment and labor market status post-pandemic. This data set will enable her to assess whether gig work contributes to increased labor informality and affects long-term educational outcomes.

Despite early setbacks, Rache’s project has evolved in promising directions. By shifting to richer microdata and refining her empirical strategy, she aims to produce credible evidence on how gig work influences the life trajectories of young people in developing economies. Her research contributes to global discussions on labor market transformation, education policy and the societal implications of technological change. The CGM’s support has been instrumental in enabling this work, and the findings are expected to inform both academic debates and policy decisions in the coming year. She will be submitting the final paper to various top economics conferences and journals.