印度政府于2020年3月24日宣布了一个全国锁定,以减缓Covid-19的传播。只需四个小时的通知实施,锁定强迫数百万突然破旧的移民,距离长途徒步返回村庄。移民派州如何支持移民的劳动力市场机会,而不会影响COVID预防努力和工人安全?Covid诱导农村劳动力市场的后果是什么?该研究有一个独特的机会,可以解决印度最贫困状态的Bihar中的这些问题,其中数十万移民最近返回。
研究团队一直在与我们的实施合作伙伴合作,现在被指定为双哈尔的Covid-19回复的两个领导之一,这是另一个研究的一部分。该政策制定者正在与政府官员在地区,副名地和村级与政府官员密切合作,以跟踪和回应大流行及其相关影响。在过去的几周内,地区管理员已被任务识别所有返回移民(例如,通过运输中心拦截),并收集将允许移民接触和跟踪的基本数据。到目前为止,已经确定了近20万移民。该团队旨在在六个月的跟踪调查中注册来自此数据库的2,000名随机选定的移民。如果资金允许,他们希望继续追踪至少一年。虽然大多数Bihari移民都是男性,但他们将过采样(针对1,000名女性登记者),以确保他们可以与两种性别的经验交谈。调查将短(10-15分钟),每月进行。问题将涵盖劳动力供应和失业,获得社会保护,粮食安全和歧视经验。他们与我们的政府对手一起设计了调查,以确保数据可以告知政策和计划以满足移民的需求。 Our team at EPoD India at LEAD at KREA University will work closely with the principal investigators to administer these phone surveys. The team anticipates providing small incentives (likely mobile recharges) to increase survey response rates.
我们与州农村发展部门的多年合作为我们提供了明确的渠道,以立即进入国家对Covid-19的政策响应。This pre-existing relationship also makes it likely that they can continue partnering with the state to develop and implement at-scale randomized evaluations of approaches to mitigate the economic effects of unemployment during the outbreak and improve migrants’ labor market opportunities in the wake of COVID-19, e.g. by leveraging MGNREGS, the central government’s workfare program. Our work is directly relevant to G²LM|LIC off-cycle priorities of understanding and effectively responding to the labor market disruptions of COVID-19 for vulnerable groups like informal workers, migrants, and factory workers. By oversampling women, the research team will also have a unique opportunity to study how the crisis impacts labor market attachment among previously-working women. Given Bihar’s extreme poverty and limited state capacity, insights from these surveys will provide important insights to low-income countries in similar conditions. Finally, they are committed to providing evidence-based policy recommendations to inform quick policy responses to COVID-19 challenges. The results of the surveys will be shared as soon as possible (within one week of closing a survey round) with Bihar’s COVID-19 response team and other policymakers working on COVID-19 response in India. The project also commits to sharing insights, as approved by the government, with a broader audience of policymakers and academics through posting survey instruments and results on Yale’s Economic Growth Center’s website.