Title: Comparative role of income and social inequality in migration decision making: a household level analysis of India

Authors: Debasis Chakraborty

Addresses: Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India

Abstract: This paper tries to analyse the relative role played by income and social inequality in rural-urban migration decision-making, exploring household level primary data of India. The study has used various income and social inequality indices, namely, economic well-being, Gini coefficient, multidimensional poverty index (MPI), etc. Results show that income factors, specifically absolute income differences rather than relative income inequalities, are the most dominant reason. Rural people are least bothered about multi-dimensional deprivation as results shows that fewer multi-dimensionally poor are migrating in higher numbers. While comparing the pre- and post-migration scenario, it has been found that the rural out-migrants have become more multi-dimensionally poor once they migrate into urban areas. Hence rural-urban migration is found to be welfare reducing. The logistic regression results show that families from scheduled castes and scheduled tribes are more multi-dimensionally poor and distance from nearby market is one of the key determinants of multidimensional poverty.

Keywords: migration; income inequality; social inequality; deprivation; multidimensional poverty index; MPI; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEBR.2023.131785

International Journal of Economics and Business Research, 2023 Vol.26 No.1, pp.24 - 42

Received: 19 Aug 2020
Accepted: 24 Jun 2021
Published online: 03 Jul 2023 *