COVID-19 pandemic intensity, migration status, and household financial vulnerability: Evidence from India

The COVID-19 pandemic adversely impacted many households across the world. Recent studies on the pandemic have focused on its impact on income, consumption, and poverty of households, but not directly on their financial well-being. Building on the prior literature on measures of financial vulnerability, this paper analyses the heterogeneous effects of COVID-19 on household financial vulnerability based on the geographical variation in the intensity of the pandemic in India and households’ migration status. Using a difference-indifferences approach and coarsened exact matching, we find a larger increase in household financial vulnerability in Indian districts that are more exposed to COVID-19 and those that experience a greater decline in night-time lights (a proxy for economic activity) compared to households in other districts. We also find that households with an out-migrant, particularly those with a female head, experience lower financial vulnerability during the pandemic, likely due to the financial contribution of migrants. However, financial vulnerability during COVID-19 is substantially higher for households that had an out-migrant in the prior period but not during the pandemic, with a larger effect observed for female-headed households. The findings of this paper contribute to a better understanding of the varied effects of the pandemic on households.