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The Partition of India: Demographic Consequences

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The Partition of India: Demographic Consequences THE PARTITION OF INDIA: DEMOGRAPHIC CONSEQUENCES PRASHANT BHARADWAJ, ASIM KHWAJA & ATIF MIANy ABSTRACT. Large scale migrations, especially involuntary ones, can have a substantial impact on the demographics of both sending and receiving communities. We estimate the impact of the 1947 Indian subcontinent partition, one of the largest and most rapid population exchanges in human history. Comparing neighboring districts better isolates the effect of the migratory flows from secular changes. We find large effects on a districts’ educational, occupational, and gender composition within four years. Due to higher education levels amongst migrants, dis- tricts with greater inflows saw their literacy rates increase by 16% more while outflows reduced literacy rates by as much as 20%. With less land vacated by those who left Indian Punjab, In- dian districts with large inflows saw a decline of 70% in the growth of agricultural occupations. Affected districts also experienced large changes in gender composition with a relatively large drop in percentage men in Indian districts that experienced large outflows, and in Pakistani districts with large inflows. While the partition, driven along religious lines, increased reli- gious homogenization within communities, our results suggest that this was accompanied by increased educational and occupational differences within religious groups. We hypothesize that these compositional effects, in addition to an aggregate population impact, are likely fea- tures of involuntary migrations and, as in the case of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, can have important long-term consequences. y UC SAN DIEGO,HARVARD KSG & CHICAGO BOOTH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS E-mail address: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]. Date: Junel 2009. Thanks to Saugata Bose, Michael Boozer, David Clingingsmith, Tim Guinnane, Ayesha Jalal, Saumitra Jha, T.N. Srinivasan, Steven Wilkinson and Jeffrey Williamson for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. We also thank the South Asia Initiative at Harvard for funding part of this project. Thanks to James Nye at the University of Chicago Library for access to the India Office records. Mytili Bala and Irfan Siddiqui provided excellent research assistance. 1 Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1294846 2 BHARADWAJ, KHWAJA & MIAN 1. INTRODUCTION Large-scale migrations have been a regular feature in world history and are an in- creasingly salient phenomenon globally. The United Nations reported in October 2002 that the number of migrants has more than doubled since 1975; currently there are around 175 million migrants worldwide. There is a rich literature in economics that examines the deter- minants of emigration as well as the long-lasting demographic and socioeconomic effects of large scale migrations.1 A well studied case is the mass migration out of Ireland between 1840 and 1920. Hatton and Williamson (1998), for example, find that poverty levels, family size, and relative wage rates were factors that affected the decision to emigrate in the context of rural Ireland prior to World War I. Work by Boyer et al (1993) examines the impact of the Irish emigration on wages in Ireland, while Guinanne (1997) uses the migration to partially explain the large decline in the Irish population for the same period. While the economic history literature has examined voluntary migrations extensively, the economic and demographic impacts of involuntary migrations and population exchanges remain relatively understudied, despite a number of salient examples such as the migrations during the partition of British India, and during the periods of strife in the Balkans, Rawanda, and the Middle East. 2 This is partly because of the challenges in obtaining reliable data dur- ing such events - these involuntary movements or exchanges typically occur under extraor- dinary circumstances such as wars, partition, and ethnic/religious strife, and often involve the movement of a large number of people in a very short amount of time. Yet these very circumstances that accompany such migrations suggest that their impact is likely to be quite severe and lasting. Moreover, in contrast to voluntary migrations that are typically character- ized by their selective nature (i.e. not everyone decides to migrate), one may conjecture that since involuntary migrations often involve entire communities moving (regardless of wealth, relative wage rates, etc.) the selection effects are smaller and the primary effect is a transfer of population. However, to the extent that there are baseline differences in the characteris- tics of the migrant and the receiving communities, even involuntary migration can result in substantial compositional changes. 1LaLonde and Topel [1996]; Hatton and Williamson [1994]; Borjas [1994]; and Borjas et al [1996] are prominent examples. 2Van Hear (1995) and Jacobsen (1997) study the role of receiving communities during times of mass involuntary migrations. Van Hear (1995) examines the impact of the involuntary return of Palestinians to Jordan in the wake of the Gulf crisis in 1990-91. He hints at potential benefits to sudden movements, despite the fact that absorption of refugees into the mainstream was a painful task. Jacobsen (1997) tackles the environmental issues that result during involuntary mass migrations. She studies their impact in the context of Africa and stresses the role of the receiving community in alleviating the environmental burden. Social science research of involuntary resettlement has made great progress in the past two decades. Social knowledge of displacement is becoming more extensive, now including all continents and different sectors of the economy (examples include Cernea [1997]; Fernandes, Das, and Rao [1989]). Social research of involuntary resettlement has begun to shift from academic analysis of localized instances to research with general policy frameworks (Fernandes and Paranjpye [1997]; OECD [1992]). Additionally, sociologists and anthropologists have further developed their models and theories of resettlement to incorporate impoverishment risks and livelihood reconstruction (Cernea [1991], [1997]). Despite many advance- ments in social science research, economic theory and research of involuntary resettlement lag far behind. Electronic copy available at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1294846 THE PARTITION OF INDIA: DEMOGRAPHIC CONSEQUENCES 3 This paper examines both the aggregate and compositional impact of a large invol- untary migration in August 1947 due to the partition of India into the countries of India, Pakistan, and what became Bangladesh. This event offers a unique opportunity to exam- ine the demographic consequences of involuntary migrations. It was one of the largest and most rapid population exchanges in human history - an estimated 16.7 million people were forced to leave during the first four years after the partition. 3 Moreover, detailed data can be compiled for the periods before and after partition, facilitating an empirical investigation. In addition, the migration was a two-way population transfer - a class of involuntary migration that has received little empirical examination. Two-way involuntary migrations are of par- ticular interest since on the surface, their net population impact is muted (since an area faces both out and in migration) and, if there are little compositional differences, one may expect that such events have little consequence. However, as our results show, despite this muting effect, such two-sided exchanges can have large compositional impacts especially since (as is likely) the baseline characteristics of migrants may differ across regions. In an initial article (Bharadwaj, Khwaja and Mian, 2008) 4 we documented the size of the population flows during the partition of British India. The main findings were that the partition involved large outflows and inflows in a relatively short period of time (we estimate 16.7 million out-migrants and with 14.5 million documented as having arrived on either side, this suggests that 2.2 million people were "missing" or unaccounted for during the partition) with these flows relatively balanced in numbers (particularly along the western border between India and Pakistan). Moreover, we documented large variation in flows even across nearby districts suggesting a localized pattern to the movements and the presence of a "local replacement effect" - districts which saw greater out-migration (relative to say a neighboring district) also saw an almost one-for-one entry of in-migrants. This paper focuses on the demographic impacts of the migratory flows on sending and receiving communities. We consider immediate demographic consequences - particu- larly along the education, occupation, and gender composition of the affected communities. While the impact of migratory flows is in general hard to separate from secular demographic changes over time, we are able to account for the latter by comparing two nearby districts that differed in the extent of migratory flows (this is feasible since nearby districts often did differ substantially in migratory flows). Under the assumption that other secular changes over time in these nearby districts are similar, we are able to better isolate the impact of the migratory flows. Moreover, we separately estimate the impact of in- and out- migration into a district, allowing us to examine both the one-way and net impact of these flows. The one-way flows are important to consider separately since the exchange was primarily along religious lines
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