Data for Development
INDIA HUMAN DEVELOPMENT SURVEY
February 2020
W elcome to the India Human Development Survey Forum

A monthly update of socio-economic developments in India by the
IHDS research community

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In This Issue...
 
This edition of the IHDS newsletter focuses on two key yet under-researched issues facing rural populations—the effect of poverty on rural women’s labour supply, and migration due to extreme climate changes in India’s rural areas.
 
  • In the first paper, the author uses IHDS data to assess how household poverty shapes trends of rural female labour supply. The results in the paper flag the existence of ‘forced’ participation among poor women, especially those who work long hours in poorly paid hazardous jobs.
 
  • Using data from two waves of the IHDS in 2004–05 and 2011–12, in combination with ERA5 re-analysis data, the second paper seeks to identify climate migrants in rural India and their migration destinations. The authors find that adverse weather shocks push people into cities of more prosperous states, and that most of the climate migrants belong to low-skilled or agricultural households.
 
  • Recent publications using IHDS
Research Findings Based on IHDS Data
(Re) Investigation of Rural Women’s Labour Supply in India: The Impact of Household Poverty Status – A Panel Data Analysis
 
Nancy Sebastian
 
This paper examines the role of household poverty in shaping rural female labour supply using the unique panel data set of the India Human Development Survey (IHDS). The results using Vella and Verbeek’s two-step panel estimation reveal the presence of a backward-sloping labour supply curve for rural women from below the poverty line (BPL) households, and an upward-sloping labour supply for rural women from above the poverty line (APL) households. This implies the existence of ‘forced’ or ‘need-based’ participation among poor women and justifies why they work long hours in poorly paid hazardous jobs. The paper also finds horizontal labour supply among agriculture wage workers and for Adivasi and Dalit rural women to some extent, reflecting limited job options, and surplus unskilled labour who are unable to demand higher wages for their labour supply. On the other hand, when categorised by occupation type, the downward-sloping labour supply for rural women from APL households indicates the dominance of the income effect over the substitution effect, and the socio-cultural factors that gain strength as income levels increase.
Note: Days worked in a year capped at 365 days; refers to rural women aged 15-65 years. Source: Author`s own calculations from IHDS-II (2011-12).
Nancy Sebastian is currently an Adjunct Lecturer teaching Macroeconomics at University of Newcastle, Singapore. Earlier, she has taught two Social Science courses at Singapore University of Social Sciences as an Associate Instructor. She has also worked as a Pre-Doctoral Fellow, under Professor Sonalde Desai at NCAER, New Delhi, and was with the IHDS team for over two years. She has published her work in various publications and has been an active participant at conferences across India and overseas. Her areas of interest are human development and public policy. She recently received her PhD (Economics) thesis from the Centre for Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Who Are the Climate Migrants and Where Do They Go? Evidence from Rural India
 
Barbora Sedova and Matthias Kalkuhl

In this paper, the authors move from the large strand of research that looks at evidence of climate migration to the questions: Who are the climate migrants? And where do they go? These questions are crucial to design policies that mitigate welfare losses of migration choices due to climate change. The authors study the direct and heterogeneous associations between weather extremes and migration in rural India. They combine ERA5 re-analysis data with the India Human Development Survey (IHDS) household panel and conduct regression analyses by applying linear probability and multinomial logit models to establish a causal relationship between temperature and precipitation anomalies, and overall migration as well as migration by destination. The paper shows that adverse weather shocks decrease rural-rural and international migration, and push people into cities in different, presumably more prosperous states. Further, the results indicate that in contrast to other migrants, climate migrants are likely to be from the lower end of the skill distribution and from households strongly dependent on agricultural production. The authors estimate that approximately 8 per cent of all rural-urban moves between 2005 and 2012 can be attributed to weather, and this figure could increase as a consequence of climate change. Thus, a key policy recommendation is to facilitate integration of less educated migrants into the urban labour market.
Barbora Sedova is a PhD candidate and a researcher in the working group Economic Growth and Human Development at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. Her research focuses on the impacts of climate change-related events on human migration and inequality. She has earlier held various research and consulting positions, including at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Netherlands, the Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic, the German Bundestag, and the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ) GmbH. She received her Bachelor's degree in Economics and Social Sciences from the Vienna University of Economics and Business, and her Master's degree in Economics from Tilburg University. 
Matthias Kalkuhl is head of the working group Economic Growth and Human Development at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change. He is Professor on Climate Change, Development and Economic Growth at the Faculty of Economic and Social Sciences of the University of Potsdam. His research focuses on the impact of climate, environment, and environmental fiscal policies on economic growth, inequality, and sustainable development. His works include empirical analyses as well as theoretical works and quantitative models. He received his PhD in Economics from the Technical University, Berlin.
IHDS in the News

FE Online. 2020. “Did Demonetisation Really Hit Consumption? Here’s What Leaked NSS Report May Have Got Wrong”, Financial Express , 29 January, Link .

Jacob, Sarah Elizabeth. 2020. “A Hindu Colony, a Muslim College, a Christian School: Here’s My Idea of India”, Youth Ki Awaaz , 28 January, Link .

Moneycontrol News. 2020. “Consumption Growth May Have Slowed but Not Declined: Report”, Moneycontrol News , 28 January, Link .

Kulkarni, Varsha S. and Raghav Gaiha. 2020. “View: It's Time to Scrutinise the Link between Poverty and Income Inequality”, The Economic Times , 20 January, Link .



Recent Publications Using IHDS

Bairagya, Indrajit. 2020. “Returns to Education in Self-Employment In India. A Comparison across Different Selection Models”, WIDER Working Paper 2020/5 , United Nations World Institute for Development Economics , Helsinki, Accessed on February 16, 2020. Link .

Burgess Robin, Michael Greenstone, Nicholas Ryan, and Anant Sudarshan. 2020. “The Consequences of Treating Electricity as a Right”, Journal of Economic Perspectives , 34(1): 145–169 , Accessed on February 16, 2020. Link .

Neto-Bradley, Andr´e Paul, Ruchi Choudhary, and Amir Bazaz. 2020. “Slipping through the Net: Can Data Science Approaches Help Target Clean Cooking Policy Interventions?”, Paper submitted to Energy Policy , Accessed on February 9, 2020. Link .

Saroj, Shashi Kala, Srinivas Goli, Md Juel Rana, and Bikramaditya K. Choudhary. 2020. “Data on Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene in Six Select Metro Cities of India”, Elsevier , 29 (2020) 105268, Accessed on February 4, 2020. Link .

Behrer, A. Patrick. 2019. “Earth, Wind and Fire: The Impact of Anti-poverty Efforts on Indian Agriculture and Air Pollution”, Working Paper , Harvard University, Accessed on February 4, 2020. Link .

Blunch, Niels-Hugo and Nabanita Datta Gupta. 2020. “Mothers’ Health Knowledge for Children with Diarrhoea: Who You Are or Who You Know?”, Review of Economics of the Household , https://doi.org/10.1007/s11150 -020-09478-y, Accessed on February 4, 2020. Link .

Sedai, Ashish, Ramaa Vasudevan, and Anita Pena. 2020. “Do ROSCAs Provide Autonomy to Women? Empirical Evidence at the National Level from India Using Instrumental Variables Approach”, DOI:10.13140/RG.2.2.22230.19520, Accessed on February 2, 2020. Link . [Download]

Chakravarthy, B. Kalyan. 2020. “Inter-Caste Marriage and Influential Factors: A Logistic Analysis of Perspectives of Eligible Women from the Indian Context”, Our Heritage , Vol. 68, No. 1, Accessed on February 1, 2020.  Link . [Download]

Mandal, Raju and Munmi Sarma. “Impact of Weather Shock on Food Insecurity: A Study on India”, in N. Roy, S. Roychoudhury, S. Nautiyal, S. Agarwal, and S. Baksi S. (eds.), Socio-economic and Eco-biological Dimensions in Resource use and Conservation . Environmental Science and Engineering, Springer, Cham , Accessed on January 30, 2020, Link . [Download]

Behlendorf, Brandon, Amira Jadoon, and Samantha Penta. 2020. “Rivalry and Recovery: The Social Consequences of Climatic Hazards in Rural India”, International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction , Volume 46 , June 2020, 101488, Accessed on January 25, 2020, Link .

Ambast, Shruti. 2019. “The Public School Education System and Subalternality in India”, Periferias , 2(4), Accessed on January 25, 2020, Link .

About IHDS
The India Human Development Survey (IHDS) is a nationally representative, multi-topic survey of 41,554 households in 1503 villages and 971 urban neighbourhoods across India. The first round of interviews was completed in 2004-05; data are publicly available through ICPSR. A second round of IHDS re-interviewed most of these households in 2011-12 (N=42,152) and data for the same can be found here.

IHDS has been jointly organised by researchers from the University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), New Delhi. Funding for the second round of this survey is provided by the National Institutes of Health, grants R01HD041455 and R01HD061048. Additional funding is provided by The Ford Foundation, IDRC and DFID.
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