Internal migration and family dynamics

The construction of Sardar Sarovar Project on River Narmada forced the residents in reservoir area to leave their ancestral place of residence and to migrate at alien environment. These people restarted their life at different places by constructing new houses. The present paper tries to examine the changes occurred in housing status with civic amenities and sanitation facilities at household level. This empirical study has been carried out through random sample survey to find out the temporal changes in housing conditions among the resettled families. It is observed that the people shifted / replaced the local to market material for house construction. Civic amenities (such as electricity connections and drinking water availability) and sanitation facilities have improved at resettlement sites among these families.

This paper attempts to study the impact of remittance on household consumption in India. The household consumption demand function is derived by maximizing a joint utility function of households and their migrant members; which is further empirically estimated using the 2007–08 National Sample Survey (NSS) data by splitting the consumption expenditure into two major categories viz., food consumption and non-food consumption. The major findings suggest that receipt of remittances have positive impact on household consumption in rural and urban India. But, receipt of remittance has statistically significant negative impact on the budget share allocated to food consumption and positive impact on the budget share allocated to the non-food consumption in the rural India. And since major categories of non-food expenditure includes: educating household members, saving or investment, improving housing condition housing and repayment of debts etc.; remittance has developmental impacts in the rural sector. Hence, it is suggested that the government should facilitate both the transfer of remittances and their channeling to productive uses, by creating the conditions for a stable investment environment in the rural India.

The kinship network of an individual changes over her life course. This study makes a contribution to kinship research, demography and cultural geography by studying how migration and demographic patterns shape the geographical availability of kin in contemporary Sweden. This study examines how distance to siblings, parents and grandparents change over a person’s life course using longitudinal administrative register data. The study follows the complete 1970 cohort (N=75 000) and all their kin and studies how individuals distance to their kin change from age 10 (1980) to age 37 (2007) by means of data on residence for siblings, parents and grandparents. The study reveals surprising continuity in geographical distance to parents after age 25. Distance to living maternal and paternal grandparents see very minor changes after the index cohort reaches their early 20s. Theories of increasing geographical dispersal of the kinship network as individual ages are not supported.

This study examines the association between internal migration and contraceptive use of households at origin, and the mediating effect of increased household income through remittances. The India Human Development Survey (2004-2005) is used to ascertain patterns of contraceptive use households with and without migrants. Overall, the experience of migration is critical: Households with a migrant have significantly higher contraceptive use than households without a migrant. Also, additional income is important: In low fertility regions (TFR at or less than 2.1), some remittance is associated with lower contraceptive use, while in intermediate fertility regions (TFR between 2.1 and 2.7), high remittance amount is associated with increased contraceptive use despite controlling for spousal absence. Family planning programs targeted at increasing contraceptive use among women must consider the importance of migration and diffusion of ideas in influencing contraceptive decisions. Future studies should account for potential influence of accumulated wealth, and how it manifests itself in family decisions regarding optimal family size.

Awareness about the innovation of health seeking behaviour leads adoption/practice of particular techniques. India’s 69 per cent of the population living in the rural areas (Population Census of India, 2011) and still usage of better health facilities are out reach of the rural residents.
The present study was conducted in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh (UP). This region is one the backward regions of India and it is characterised by agricultural economy, lack of industries and natural resources. According to the Population Census of India (2001) highest rural out-migrants rates were in UP. The highest rural out-migration rates was from Bundelkhand regions of UP. We have interviewed 360 farmers from six villages in two districts equally.
Study shows that migrant household was more health conscious and better aware about the health seeking mechanisms than non-migrant household. Member of the migrant household have better socio-economic status and more exposure about the urban life style due to migration. Migrant households have not faith in the herbal and religious practice for treatment. Most of the migrant households have used private hospital for the treatment as they have better economic conditions.

This paper aims to determine whether and to what extent migration of female college students for doing higher education in metropolitan Tehran influences their premarital heterosexual relationships and sex and it is based on a mix method study on sexual norms, attitude and conduct of female college students in Tehran conducted in 2005-6. The survey was conducted on a sample of 1743 undergraduate students in four multidisciplinary universities using two stage stratified cluster sampling and a self-administered questionnaire. 12.8% of cases had migrated from other provinces to Tehran. Ever experience of premarital sex was similarly significantly greater among Tehrani Students than migrants (24.2% vs. 15.9%, p<0.05). Odds ratio of acquiring a boyfriend after migration to Tehran is 2.40(p<0.001) compared to acquiring boy friend before university entrance (migration) even after controlling of age. Interestingly, once the effects of religiosity, family control during adolescent period, and respect to parental views are controlled in a multivariate model, the odds of acquiring boyfriend after university entrance is significantly greater among migrants than among native students compared to acquiring boyfriend before university entrance.

Pattern and causes of female migration are changing in India. An increasing proportion of women are moving towards cities, particularly big cities for reasons other than marriage. The present paper tries to understand the pattern, causes and trends of female migration to mega cities of India and its linkage with development. The study is based on secondary data collected by Census. It is found that most of the migrants to cities originate from socio-economically backward states of India. Marriage is still the most important factor of female migration in India but its importance is declining over the periods. On the other hand, it is quite encouraging to find that the proportion of females migrating for work, employment and education is increasing over the period of time. The volume of female migration to all the six mega cities has also increased over the period of time. Regression results linking the migration with the development indicators of the states shows that the states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa which have lower level of development have witnessed higher volume and rate of female out-migration. Similarly states like Maharashtra and Delhi having higher level of development have received more in-migration.

In the process of large-scale migration in recent China, many migrants are unable to bring core family members along due to structural and institutional constraints in receiving societies, which has yielded profound effects on the family in both receiving and origin societies. Drawing on nationally representative and large-scale data collected in 2012, this paper examines the dynamics of family migration in China. While further analysis is still ongoing, preliminary analytical results highlight a pattern of half-familization of migration such that migrants tend to move with some, but not all of core families member (e.g., migrants may move by himself, with only spouse or only children, or with spouse and some children). The largest barriers for family reunion lay in (1) the hukou institution that divides individuals into peasants and urbanites, and insiders and outsiders, (2) local protections in the labor market, and (3) local residents’ exclusive attitudes. The half-familization of migration would have implications for the wellbeing of family members, and challenges the notion that migration would necessary improve the wellbeing of those involved. National- and local-level policies (e.g., education, housing, and social security) should be reformulated to facilitate the process of family reunion for those who desire to do so.

Marital stability is an increasingly important question in the transformation of the surplus rural labor force in China. This paper investigates the relationships between mobility, family values and marital satisfaction of rural inhabitants.The objective of the analysis is to examine the effect of family values on the influence of out-migration with couple’s living seperation on marital satisfaction with spouse. Data were obtained from a sample of 678 married people in Chaohu of Anhui province of central China in 2010. The results show that there is a significant negative correlation between seperation and satisfaction with spouse. However the correlation is weakened by family-dominated culture, which is still strong in rural China. Implications of these results for marital stability and changes of rural families are discussed.

Traditionally the relationship between the cost of housing and fertility has been assumed to be negative: high relative house prices deter the moves into home ownership or into larger dwellings deemed necessary by many for raising children. However, recent research from the US challenges this view by emphasizing the wealth effects of increasing home values among owners. This paper examines the relationship between short-run fluctuations in local area house prices and fertility in England and Wales between 1995 and 2008, using individual-level data from a household panel merged to area-level data on house prices. Innovations relative to previous work are a focus on the precise timing of the relationship between housing market conditions and fertility responses and a systematic analysis of the differential effects of house price levels and changes. The results suggest house price effects vary considerably for different groups and point to the importance of the national contexts.