Gender and Household Migration Decision in India: Evidence from NSSO

This paper examines the relative differences in risk of migration across gender at household level. It further tries to explore the gender-specific dynamics of migration within the household. The theoretical framework is drawn from the New Economics of Labour Migration modified to address gender dimension which has placed migration decision making process in a household context. The empirical part uses the nationally representative survey (NSSO) data in India held during 2007-08 and uses multivariate regression technique to measure the relative risk of migration. For the bi-variate analysis households are classified into single/more than one/total migrants’ households according to number of migrants present within the household to understand the gender differences in migration.
The results reveal that in poor household female’s risk of migration is much higher than males signifying vulnerability of females both as bread winners and care takers. Female from low income group, from large household size, having more number of dependents and from low educated households are more likely to migrate than that of male. This implies to cope up with household vulnerabilities, to minimize the income risk and to improve the economic status of the family, women take recourse to migration as a practicable strategy.