Impact of internal migration on left behind youth's labour force participation in India

This paper investigates the impact of internal migration of the working age male member from a household on the probability of labour force participation of left behind youth. Using the 64th round unit level data on employment, unemployment and migration particulars of individuals, collected by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) of India, we find that almost 19% of the total youth in the sample belongs to the households with one male member internally migrated. The estimation results after controlling for possible sources of endogeneity bias suggest that short-term internal migration of at least one male member from the household considerably reduces the probability of early labour force participation among the youth in both rural and urban area. Long-term migration is associated with rise in the probability. However, such association is found to be significant only in rural area. This result indicates that the intermittent flow from short-term migration can enhance the schooling of youth, discouraging early labour force participation among them. However, the regular flow of financial resources from long term migration appears to be insufficient in exerting any such impact.