Does Food Insecurity Hinder Migration? Experimental Evidence from the Indian Public Distribution System

Households in our treatment group were read a script during the baseline survey. The script included basic information about the ONORC scheme, including that their ration allowance is portable across district and state lines; information on which states had joined the ONORC program by the time of the survey; information on the documents required to claim ration outside of their designated PDS shop; several caveats about practical barriers to using ONORC; and information on government offices responsible for resolving ration access issues and the phone number of a government helpline dedicated to ration portability. The script was read by an enumerator, and an information sheet was left with the respondent. In cases where respondents had clarifying or follow-up questions, enumerators were instructed to answer them if possible or to direct the respondent to our information hotline if not. All respondents were provided access to an information hotline which they could call to obtain local information (phone numbers and/or addresses) on ration shops across 29 states. We processed and uploaded individual ration shop information to Mapbox and Google Earth so that hotline staff could search for ration shops within or near the caller’s locality of interest. The hotline was staffed by research assistants, who could also answer basic questions about ration portability. Hotline access lasted for 5 months after the beginning of the intervention (from October 2021 to March 2022). Households in the control group did not receive the script, sheet, or hotline access.

2021-10-20

2021-12-31

Total emigration

We will measure total emigration as the number of individuals who are either baseline or new emigrants. We will also report a dummy measure equal to 1 if any family member is a baseline or new emigrant.

Knowledge of ration portability, planned new emigration, new emigration, urban emigration, inter-state and inter-district emigration, family earned income, family total consumption, occupational upgrading, subjective financial well-being, food security, ration claiming, job search efforts, remittances, index of economic well-being, emigration within high migration propensity households.

See attached pre-analysis plan.

We will conduct our intervention with a subset of the survey sample covered by the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), which has collected panel data on a nationally representative sample of approximately 170,000 households since 2014. We will add a module on PDS portability to CMIE's questionnaire for a random subset of their sample. This will enable us to conduct an information intervention and utilize the rich panel data that CMIE regularly collects on employment, migration, and welfare, at minimal cost and at a large scale.

Treatment status was assigned at the cluster level using a stratified permutation method. Strata were formed from the following features: state identifier, an urban dummy, a dummy for clusters with an above-median share of households that had sent an emigrant anywhere since 2017, and a dummy for clusters with an above-median poverty rate (defined as being below the 40th percentile of per-adult-equivalent household consumption). The Stata command randtreat was used, assigning misfits using the global method.

Clusters of CMIE's primary sampling units. A PSU roughly corresponds to a village in rural areas, and a town/city in urban areas.

Yes

Approximately 1,740 clusters

Approximately 62,130 households

Treatment: 892 clusters, 30,674 households
Control: 848 clusters, 31,456 households

At 90% power and 1% significance, our minimum detectable effect for the increase in the share of households with a migrant is about 1 percentage point off a base of 45% (std dev = 0.498). That is, we are powered to detect a change from 45% to 46% or higher. Our minimum detectable effect for monthly per adult equivalent household consumption is 2.9 rupees on a base of 137 (about 2%, std dev = 76). Our minimum detectable effect for monthly per adult equivalent household income is 11.4 rupees on a base of 261 (about 4%, std dev = 287).

Pre-Analysis Plan