Impact of Social Connections on Flood-induced Migration Among Rural Agricultural Households: Empirical Evidence from India

Frequent flooding due to climate change poses significant challenges for rural populations, often forcing them to adopt migration as a coping strategy. However, while the impact of flood on migration is well documented in the literature, very little is known about the role of households’ social capital, in terms of collective efficacy, on flood-induced migration. Our study aims to fill this gap in the literature. We use 30 years of district level rainfall data from the Indian Meteorological Department to construct an objective measure of flood. Furthermore, two rounds of household data from the India Human Development Survey are employed to construct a subjective perception-based flood measure at the village level. We employ both Dose–response and Triple-Difference (DDD) models to investigate the role of social capital in flood-induced migration. Our empirical results show that while the objective measure of flood has an insignificant impact on migration, the subjective measure has a significant positive impact, after controlling for household socio-economic and demographic factors. Furthermore, intensity of migration among socially connected households is found to be more compared to their counterparts who are not socially connected. The findings of the DDD analysis are robust to the Placebo test of fake treatment analysis. Overall, our results highlight that households are more likely to undertake migration when they are confident about relying on their community networks for support during floods. The policy implications include the need to improve community bonding, trust, and reciprocity among households through the introduction of community development programs and social services.