The age-sex specific rates for labour force participation are no doubt highly suitable for comparative purposes, especially when comparisons are made between the rates of different regions or countries. It is, however, rather inconvenient to use several rates while making such comparisons.
There is hence a need for a summary measure which will not suffer from the weakness of the crude participation rate. The age-adjusted or age-standardised participation fulfils this need.
The standardised labour force participation rate is a convenient summary measure and is useful for comparing the degree of participation of persons in the labour force in various countries.
The procedure for computing the age standardised male participation rate for India is illustrated in Table 12.2. While computing this rate, the age specific participation rates for males in the country were applied to the population in the corresponding age group of the standard male population selected arbitrarily.
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The sum of these products for all age groups divided by the total number of persons for all ages in the standard population yielded the standardised participation rate.
Thus the age standardised male labour force participation rate for India was 63.44, while the crude labour force participation rate for males in India in 1991 was 51.55.
The standardised male labour force participation rate of 63.44 for India indicates that, if the Indian age distribution of males had been like that of the United States, the male labour force participation rate would have been 63.44.
This rate may now compared with the crude rate of male labour force participation the United States (62.0) and one can arrive at the conclusion to the labour force participation rate for males is slightly higher India than in the United States.
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It may be pointed out, however that age standardised rates are useful only for comparative purposes. By themselves, they have no meaning.