📰 Ten Years in Tamil Nadu: Exploring Labour, Migration and Debt from Longitudinal Household Surveys in South India

A working paper detailing the NEEMSIS longitudinal survey has just been published in the DIAL working paper. The authors (M. Di Santolo, I. Guérin, S. Michiels, C. Mouchel, A. Natal, C. J. Nordman, and G. Venkatasubramanian) first explain the context in which the NEEMSIS data collection takes place, then detail the collection process and present the major trends in terms of labour, migration and debt that have been observed since 2010.

Abstract: Indian society has been experiencing significant changes since the nineties brought by a gradual set of reforms in favour of a market economy and the country’s integration into the global economy.However, despite outstanding economic growth for the last decades, India continues to be gripped by strong inequalities and the burden of social institutions such as caste, family or gender.Regarding the time pace of such changes, longitudinal studies appear to be particularly useful and revealing in analysing the extent of socio-economic dynamics.This paper aims to propose a new longitudinal data collection tool and a broad picture of socio-economic dynamics in rural areas of Tamil Nadu for the last decade.Data have been collected using the NEEMSIS survey.It is focused on more than 600 households from 10 villages in Tamil Nadu at three points in time; 2010, 2016-17 and 2020-21.The NEEMSIS survey encompass key topics including employment, indebtedness, agriculture, wealth, formation of skills, social networks, or social and spatial mobilities.

Read more »