Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-1-2018
Publication Title
Journal of Economic Geography
Abstract
Internal mobility is a critical component of economic growth and development, as it enables the reallocation of labor to more productive opportunities across sectors and regions. Using detailed district-to-district migration data from the 2001 Census of India, the article highlights the role of state borders as significant impediments to internal mobility. The analysis finds that average migration between neighboring districts in the same state is at least 50% larger than neighboring districts on different sides of a state border, even after accounting for linguistic differences. Although the impact of state borders differs by education, age and reason for migration, it is always large and significant. The article suggests that inter-state mobility is inhibited by state level entitlement schemes, ranging from access to subsidized goods through the public distribution system to the bias for states' own residents in access to tertiary education and public sector employment.
Keywords
Emigration, Immigration, Internal borders, Internal migration
Volume
18
Issue
4
First Page
729
Last Page
759
DOI
10.1093/jeg/lbx045
ISSN
14682702
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights
Licensed to Smith College and distributed CC-BY under the Smith College Faculty Open Access Policy.
Recommended Citation
Kone, Zovanga L.; Liu, Maggie Y.; Mattoo, Aaditya; Ozden, Caglar; and Sharma, Siddharth, "Internal Borders and Migration in India" (2018). Economics: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/eco_facpubs/56
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.