Essays on household behaviour at the intersection of conflict and natural disasters: the 2010 floods in Pakistan

This thesis examines household behaviour at the intersection of natural disasters and conflict. I structure this research around four distinct analytical chapters that use empirical microeconomic analysis to study household-level decisions and outcomes in the year following the 2010 floods in Pakistan. I first examine how does conflict affect household access to cash transfer programmes, and what mechanisms explain such effects. Using IV estimation to overcome endogeneity of conflict exposure and cash transfer receipts, I find that conflict reduces household and community level access to two large cash transfer programmes in Pakistan. The effects are driven by the likely presence of armed rebel groups who possibly resent state-led efforts to win legitimacy through social protection programmes. Next, I examine the effect of conflict on household access to remittances. I use IV estimation to overcome the endogeneity of conflict and remittance receipts and find that conflict exposure reduces household remittance receipts. This effect is driven by security threats associated with armed group presence, which threatens the operations of informal money transfer agents. Further, I find evidence for conflict negatively affecting investment-focused remittances as the effects of conflict are strongest among households more likely to use remittances for investment, than for consumption. These findings are in contrast to the macro literature that tend to view conflict as a factor that affects altruistic motives of remittances but has not examined investment motives in detail. In my third analytical chapter I examine the unintended effects of household aid receipts on violence through a mechanism that has not been studied in much detail: civilian militarisation through the purchase of guns. Using propensity score matching to overcome selection bias, I find that overall, flood relief cash transfers did not lead to any increases in household gun ownership. However recipients who own large tracts of land and live in conflict-affected areas were 8.3% more likely to acquire a gun, compared to a matched group of non-recipient households. The effects are driven by households that lived in displacement camps, which may have enhanced security concerns and the need for guns. This suggests that for groups that have low material but high security needs, exogenous increases in cash, through cash transfers, can increase the likelihood of acquiring guns for use, or for signalling, as a safety good. Finally, I examine the under-studied role of uncertainty of disasters in affecting post-disaster short-term migration decisions. I find that while flooding exposure increases the propensity to migrate, a higher level of uncertainty, represented by more anomalous floods (compared to recurring floods), decreases migration. I also develop a measure of flooding anomaly, based on the likely past exposure to floods at the community level, using satellite data on long term precipitation levels, and distance to the nearest rivers. My research examines important, but hitherto under-studied and challenging relationships that play out in complex emergencies, where many households simultaneously face flooding and violent conflict shocks. The findings are relevant for economic theory, empirical analysis and for policy

Can rigorous impact evaluations improve humanitarian assistance?

Each year billions of US-dollars of humanitarian assistance are mobilised in response to man-made emergencies and natural disasters. Yet, rigorous evidence for how best to intervene remains scant. This dearth reflects that rigorous impact evaluations of humanitarian assistance pose major methodological, practical and ethical challenges. While theory-based impact evaluations can crucially inform humanitarian programming, popular methods, such as orthodox RCTs, are less suitable. Instead, factorial designs and quasi-experimental designs can be ethical and robust, answering questions about how to improve the delivery of assistance. We argue that it helps to be prepared, planning impact evaluations before the onset of emergencies

Misfortune, misfits and what the city gave and took: The stories of South-Indian child labour migrants 1935-2005

AbstractWe use a primary data-set comprising the work-life histories of 90 individuals from Coastal and central Karnataka who migrated for work to Mumbai, Bangalore and other destinations sometime between 1935 and 2005. These migrants were all below the age of 15 at the time of leaving home, and their work-life histories provide a unique platform for studying persistence, change and spatial variation in relation to the incidence and causes of child labour migration, in the intrahousehold agreements and dissent that preceded these migration events, and in the workplace experiences and other outcomes awaiting these very young migrants. While migration prior to 1975 was mostly from the Coastal belt, it was often prompted by financial distress and usually targeted small, South-Indian eating places in Mumbai. More recent migration frequently involves educational ‘misfits’. In spite of their young age when leaving home, our informants typically came to regard migration as a transformative and attitude-changing experience that opened new avenues for acquiring work-related and other skills, languages included. This transformative potential varied across time, destinations and occupations and is, we suggest, intimately linked to leisure becoming a reality. Limitations are identified for those who migrated early, for agricultural labourers whose social lives would often be confined to caste-fellows from their native place and for girls working as domestic servants. This paper illustrates how early migrants to Mumbai were uniquely placed, in that migration for work improved their educational opportunities. Their accounts of the Kannada Night Schools they attended provide a useful corrective to official documents and evaluations.</jats:p

‘Girls Don’t Become Craftsmen’: Determinants and Experiences of Children’s Work in Gemstone Polishing in Jaipur

<p>This paper explores the determinants and valuations of children’s work and schooling choices drawing on primary mixed-methods research in the gemstone polishing industry of Jaipur, India. In addition to economic and demographic factors, the gendered expectations of children’s futures shapes their work and schooling outcomes. For boys, work is additionally driven by the need to acquire training for future employment and wages, and simultaneously complements, and competes with formal schooling. They can work at workshops, acquire higher skills, and can aspire to become skilled craftsmen whereas girls work at home on low-skill activities mainly to supplement household income.</p

Winning or Buying Hearts and Minds? Cash Transfers and Political Attitudes in Pakistan

This paper studies how household-level receipts of cash transfers affect political attitudes in Pakistan. The paper exploits the locally exogenous eligibility cut-off of the flagship Benazir Income Support Programme to estimate causal effects. The main results show evidence of improved satisfaction with the government among beneficiaries of the programme. The paper discusses what potential mechanisms may explain this result and finds no evidence of changes in attitudes being associated with improvements in state capacity or better economic and security prospects. Instead, we find that the effect is present only when the programme has been in place in communities for over two years, which coincides with the switch to proxy-means test-based targeting from the earlier modality of nominations by parliamentarians. The main result is therefore driven by better connected and politically important communities that were favoured by incumbent parliamentarians for programme rollout before the introduction of objective targeting criteria