Internal Migration, Public Goods Provision, and Democratic Accountability in Rural India

Abstract: Temporary migration is central to household risk diversification in developing countries. How do political elites respond to shock-induced migration among their constituents? I argue that migration reshapes elite incentives non-monotonically: modest migration may prompt elites to invest in public goods to retain a shrinking electorate, but mass migration undercuts the distributive logic for doing so. Using a novel panel dataset constructed from India’s Rural Economic and Demographic Survey (REDS), I show that shock-induced migration exhibits a robust inverted-U relationship with public goods provision—moderate migration is associated with marginal improvements in provision, but mass migration undermines it. By contrast, community meeting frequency and member attendance decline monotonically with migration, indicating a parallel weakening of local deliberative institutions. Additionally, villages experiencing intensive migration see declines in the share of college-educated candidates contesting for council leadership positions. These findings suggest that migration reshapes elites’ incentives to govern by undermining grass-roots accountability mechanisms in left behind areas.

Key Words: Migration, Demographic Change, Public Goods Provision, Institutions, Elite Behavior, Political Accountability