Abstract:   In developing countries where medical infrastructure and service delivery system, and the market for health insurance are underdeveloped, one important mechanism to cope with consequences of health shocks is the intra-household substitution of labour. Most of the available studies have evaluated intra-household labour substitution in response to a health shock using low frequency annual data. This paper, using a panel of high frequency monthly data from the rural households in semi arid tropics of India, investigates the impacts of short-term illness shocks on individuals’ labour supply and wage earnings. It also evaluates compensating intra-household labour supply responses to short-term illness shocks of other non-ill members of the household. We find that an illness shock reduces an individual’s monthly wage earnings by 4.3% via the decline in the individual’s days of work in the labour market. Further, an illness shock to the household-head causes a compensating increase in the spouse’s labour supply in wage labour market and livestock activities. Similarly, an illness shock to the spouse forces the household-head to devote more time to domestic and livestock activities.