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South Asia Section Virtual Webinar: Seasonal Poverty and Internal Migration: A Research Agenda in Bangladesh and Nepal

When: Friday, October 18, 2024
Time: 2:00-3:15pm Central Time
Organizer: Modhurima Dey Amin, Texas Tech University
Speaker: Dr. Mushfiq Mobarak, Yale University
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

This virtual session hosted by AAEA's SAS Section will outline a research agenda and open questions around the causes and consequences of internal (within-country) migration, as well as the opportunities and impediments associated with such movements. Much of that movement in seasonal and circular, in response to seasonal deprivation during pre-harvest lean periods.

Dr. Mushfiq Mobarak from Yale University will join to discuss the details of a research paper titled “Remittance Constraints and Seasonal Poverty.” Rural households send migrants to mitigate seasonal deprivation, but remittances don't always arrive in time. We observe a counter-intuitive pattern in Nepal where remittances are low when rural residents are food insecure, and migrants return with remittances later during harvest. To overcome this apparent remittance constraint indirectly, we provide a $90 loan to randomly-selected rural households during the pre-harvest lean season. Harvest period remittances increase in loan-recipient households, and 89% of the loan principal is repaid. Food security improves, and those households increase fertilizer use and own-farm labor. That increases their rice harvest, revenues, and subjective well-being. In a two-period model of household decision-making, we show that remittance frictions are necessary to qualitatively match our experimental results.

We look forward to seeing you there!
AAEA's South Asia Section

 

Past Events

Track Sessions

2024

  • Food, Water, Energy, and Trade in South Asia
    Organizer: Aditya R. Khanal (Tennessee State University)

    South Asia region has intricate challenges around food and nutritional security, water scarcity, energy access, and trade dynamics. These issues and factors related to food, water management, energy sustainability, and trade policies also shape development and stability in the region. The presentations and discussions in the session highlighted these aspects, including empirical findings on energy transition in agriculture and land market pathways in Bangladesh, adoption and implications of sustainable energy use practices in farm water management in Nepal, implications of climate change, price volatility, and trade policy in South Asian grain markets and India, as well as the link of green revolution and obesity in India.

    Lead-off speaker: Ashok K. Mishra (Arizona State University)

    Lightening paper presenters/ speaker: Marie-Charlotte Buisson (IWMI-CGIAR); Kayode M. Ajewole (USDA - Economic Research Service); Kashi Kafle (Texas A & M); Madhuri Saripalle (Krea University, India); Ethan Sabala (USDA), Kumar Ashutosh (Krea University, India)

    Discussant: Dikshit Poudel (University of Georgia)

2023

  • South Asian Agriculture in the Twenty-first Century: Poverty Alleviation and Sustaining Resources