correlates of "decision to move or stay" in ahmedabad, india

Correlates of "Decision to Move or Stay" in Ahmedabad, India

Vijayan K. Pillai The University of Zambia

ABSTRACT: This is a study of the factors associated with the decision to move in the Indian city of Ahmedabad. The objective of the study is to examine the nature and influence of occupational sectors (formal and informal) on the decision to move. A subsample of 1630 households selected from 2000 households surveyed in 1976 is used. The method of linear logistic regression is used to analyze data. Empirical findings indicate that the occupational sector has a significant influence on the decision to move or stay. The factors associated with the decision to move or stay vary by sectors.

Several researchers have suggested theoretical models of decision to move or stay in developing societies (McGee, t976; Weinstein, 1974; Weinstein & McNulty, 1979). One weakness of this research is that the empirical tests of the models are few and far between. Given the limitation of this research, the objective of this paper is to test an empirical model of the decision to move or stay within a city of a developing society, specifi- cally, Ahmedabad City in India.

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

Perhaps one of the most important factors which influence the householder's decision to move or stay is related to work role and occupation

Data from India were collected by the author and professor Jay Weinstein, Georgia Insti- tute of Technology, Atlanta. The author wishes to thank Prof. Dennis Conway of The Univer- sity of Indiana; Dr. Burton Mindick, and the referees for helpful comments. Thanks are also due to the Director of the Iowa Urban Community Research Center for his support and Ms. Ann C. Kelley for her assistance.

Population and Environment, Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 1987 © 1987 Human Sciences Press 191

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POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT

(Duncan, 1955; Rossi, 1955). It is assumed that occupations are ranked and that the labor market is well-organized. Occupations cannot be rank ordered in many developing societies. In addition, the occupational roles in developing societies are not well-defined (McGee, 1976) and the labor market poorly organized.

A number of studies deal with structure of urban economies of developing societies (Boekke, 1953; McGee, 1976). These studies, relying on the notion of dual economy, explain the differences in structural factors such as the occupational structure across developed and developing societies. The proponents of the dual economy theory argue that with regard to developing societies, the labor market is not homogeneous. There are two labor markets or sectors: the informal and the formal.

McGee (1976) suggests that in developing societies, occupation can be classified into those which resemble their developed counterparts in their role expectations and those which do not. These two groups of occupations belong to separate levels or sectors (formal and informal) of the economy. One of the attributes of the formal sector is that it allows for considerable amount of vertical occupational mobility. The informal sector occupations are not organized well-enough to facilitate vertical occupational mobility (Santos, 1979).

The informal sector is characterized by institutional restraints such as discrimination, lack of emphasis on the efficiency criterion for labor re- cruitment, wage discrimination by custom rather than by criterion of labor productivity, imperfect information about the qualifications of workers, disjunction between occupational roles and skills, and the lack of demand for external labor markets (Friedman & Sullivan, 1974; Wachter, 1974; Mazumdar, 1976; Santos, 1979).

It is noteworthy that the structural differences between the two sectors are intransient and therefore the differences between them remain stable over a long period (Boekke, 1953; Geertz, 1963; Myrdal, 1970; Singer, 1970; Breman, 1978).

Membership in the sectors has implications for the householder's decision'to move or stay. For example, the formal sector has a high degree of social and occupational mobility (Rossi, 1955). This may result in a greater propensity for geographic mobility among members of the formal sector (Duncan, 1955) than among members of the informal. Thus in developing societies, the occupational structure may be an important constraint on the decision to move or stay.

I hypothesize that the householders of the formal sector are more likely to decide to move than are those of the informal sector.

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VIJAYAN K. PILLAI

Variables

The dependent variable is dichotomous. The two categories are movers and stayers. Movers are respondents who expressed their decision to move out of their current residences if they become free to do so. The stayers are those who expressed their decision to remain in their residences at the time of interview. The two groups are coded 1 and 0 respectively.

Of the two occupational sectors, the informal sector consists of those occupations which have been identified as informal occupations in the literature on informal sector--coded 0 in this study. The rest of the occupations are included in the category, formal sector--coded 1. A number of characteristics have been proposed in the literature by which the two sectors may be separately identified (Hart, 1970, 1973; Osterman, 1975; Onokerhoraye, 1977; Bromley, 1978). Based on these characteristics, a clear classification of the occupations into two sectors is difficult to accom- plish because of a number of factors. A major factor is that only a few studies provide an adequate description of the occupations to facilitate their classification into two sectors (lyengar, 1956; Gould, 1965; Bhatta- charya, 1969; Mehta, 1969; Joshi & Lubel, 1976; Streefland, 1977). In this study, the informal sector consists of those occupations which have been identified as informal in the available literature. For example, hawkers, gardeners, and tailors are considered as informal sector occupations. ~

The previous literature on intraurban residential mobility and dual economy theory suggest a number of variables which influence the householder's decision to move or stay (Boekke, 1955; Simmons, 1955; Moore, 1965; Morrison, 1971 ; Berry & Kasarda, 1977). These variables are important controls for examining the net effect of occupational sectors on the householder's decision to move or stay.

The controls to be implemented based on the existing research studies are; Age of the head of the household (Rossi, 1955; Abu-Lughod & Foley, 1960; Simmons, 1968; Berry & Kasarda, 1977; Lagory, 1981); Family size (Berry & Kasarda, 1977); Location of the household (Simmons, 1968; Butler & Kaiser, 1971; Conway & Brown, 1980); Caste membership (Sjo- berg, 1960; Mehta, 1969; AI-yousef, 1981); Head of the household's birth place (Weinstein, 1979); Head of the household's income, and education (Berry & Kasarda, 1977), and Tenure status (Simmons, 1968).

Male head's income is the reported current monthly income. Family size is the number of children born to the male head of the household and alive on the date of interview. Male head's birth year is the male head of the household's reported year of birth. Male head's birth place is a dichot-

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omous variable (1 = born in Ahmedabad City; 0 = otherwise). Male head's education is the reported number of years of schooling.

Distance is a dichotomous variable with the householders located within one and a quarter kilometers from the geographical center of the city coded 0 and the rest coded 1. Thus the codes 0 and 1 represent the city core region and the periphery respectively.

The variable Jati is the caste of the male head of the household. In this study, the four caste groups, namely, the Patels, Brahmins, Kshatriyas, and Baniyas constitute the upper castes. The rest of the caste groups are included in the lower caste category. The codes assigned to the two groups are, 0 for upper castes and 1 for lower castes.

Those who were not paying rent at the date of the interview are cat- egorized as owners and are assigned a code of 0. The rest are called renters and a code of 1 is assigned to them.

M E T H O D

Sample

The data used in this study are taken from a sample of 2000 households surveyed in 1976 for a study of the ecological structure of Ahmed- abad, India. Multistage cluster sampling (Cochran, 1977) was used to select sample households. A detailed description of a sampling scheme similar to the one employed in this study is given in Weinstein (1974). All households with living male and female spouses were selected for the present study and the subsample contained 1648 households.

Procedure

The first stage of analysis is confined to a sample description of the sample in terms of the measures of central tendency and dispersion. The second stage employs a multivariate analytical framework. The net direct effect of occupational structure is examined. The last stage of analysis is exploratory. The effects of selected variables on the householder's decision to move or stay is considered across sectors.

The linear logistic regression method (Cox, 1970) is used to examine the hypothesis. A simple description of this method is given in Hanushek and Jackson (1977). Logistic linear regression is more useful than ordinary least-square dummy dependent variable regression and discriminant analysis for a number of reasons. Discriminant analysis is based on the assumption that independent variables are normally dis-

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tributed with equal variances (Lachenbruch, 1975). The method of ordinary least-square regression treats the dummy dependent variable as though it is continuous. When one uses this method, at times the pre- dicted values lie outside of the 0, 1 range. In the empirical model proposed here, a few variables are measured at the nominal level. This violates the assumption of normality. Under the condition of nonnor- mality, logistic regression is preferred (Klienbaum & Kuper, 1978; Press & Wilson, 1978). Logistic regression reduces the likelihood of false inference from violation of the assumption of normal'ity.

RESULTS

The proposed explanation of the decision to move or stay among householders of a city in a developing society is that the occupational structure acts as a constraint on the propensity to move from one residence to another. The tendency to decide to move among formal sector householders is expected to be significantly greater than that of the informal sector householders.

Table 1 presents the means and standard deviations of the variables. In the sample, the average income of the male head of the household is approximately 500 rupees (roughly 60 U.S. dollars). The average education of the head is eight years. The average per capita monthly income for

TABLE 1

Means and Standard Deviations of the Variables in the Model Related to the Decision to Move or Stay in Ahmedabad City, India, 1976

Standard Variable Mean Deviation

Male Head of the Household's Education Age of the Male Head of the Household Male Head of the Household's Birth Place Formal/Informal Sector Male Head of the Household's Income Distance of the Household from

City Center (Periphery = 1) Family Size Renter/Owner Jati (Upper/Lower)

08.02 04 .96 32 .26 11.24 00 .45 00 .49 00 .83 00 .37

503 .47 469.41

00.51 00.51 02 .79 01 .63 00 .54 00 .50 00 .63 00 .48

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Madras (an urban area like Ahmedabad) is 450 rupees and average education of the male head of the household is approximately nine years (Wein- stein, 1974). The average family size is three. More than 50% of the male heads of households in the sample were born outside of Ahmedabad. Roughly 50% of the householders live in rented houses. About 1 7% of the householders belong to the informal sector. A few African urban studies suggest that more than half of the work force in many cities is employed in the informal sector. I have no such figures from India.

Table 2 reports the results of logistic regression. The variables in the model are entered as a set. The estimates of the coefficients by the maxi- mum likelihood method procedure are shown in Table 2. The beta coefficients indicate the strength and the direction of each of the independent variables in the model to the logistic transformation (log odds of occur- rence) of the dummy dependent variable. In order to restore the usual probabilistic rather than the chance interpretation of the coefficients, the coefficients are multiplied by (P) (1 -P) where P is the proportion of householders who have decided to move. Householders who are employed in

TABLE 2

Logistic Analysis of the Decision to Move or Stay among Householders in Ahmedabad City, India, 1976.

All Sectors Formal Sector Informal Sector Variable Beta Beta Beta

Male Head of the Household's Education 0.005* 0.006* 0.015*

Age of the Male Head of the Household 0.002 0.003 - 0.004

Male Head of the Household's Birth Place 0.062* 0.052 0.180*

Formal/Informal Sector 0.050* - - - - Male Head of the Household's

Income 0.000" 0.000" 0.000 Distance of the Household

from the City Center (Periphery = 1 ) 0.266* - 0.296* - 0.0999

Family Size 0.001 0.005 - 0.031 Renter/Owner 0.046" 0.054" 0.055 Jati 0.011 * - 0.041 0.175*

*p<.l

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VIJAYAN K. PILLAI

the formal sector are more likely to decide to move than those who are employed in the informal sector. It is significant at t h e - - ( p < . l ) level (see Table 2, column 1).

The results of this study indicate the importance of the impact of occupational structure on the decision to move or stay in a developing society. Previous explanations of the decision to move or stay in developing societies have focussed only on residential and household characteristics such as the family size. They did not take into account one of the most important differences between the developed and developing societies-- the predominance of the informal sector. The informal sector has no explicit rules based on achieved characteristics to move from one occupation to another which is more desirable. Consequently, the life chances of the informal and formal sector employees may differ. This may have an impact on the decision to move or stay.

DISCUSSION

Empirical findings suggest that the occupational sector has a significant influence on the householder's decision to move or stay. This finding raises several issues with regard to the processes which lead to the decision to move or stay. One may speculate that there are different processes affecting the decision to move or stay across the sectors. This speculation is tested here in an exploratory manner.

The models of the householder's decision to move or stay may vary across sectors. This can be explored by examining whether an interaction model provides a better fit of the data. The dummy variable "Occupational Sector" is multiplied with a number of variables to obtain several multipli- cative terms which are included in the new interaction model. Multipl ica- tive terms of Caste, Male head of the household's place of birth, Family size, and Distance are obtained.

An examination of the interaction effects revealed that all interactions specified in the model, except that of the occupational sector with family size, have significant ef fects-- (P<. l ) . Both the direct and interaction effects of family size are not s ign i f icant - - (p>. l ) . The three interaction effects, Jati X Occupational sector; Male head of the household's place of birth X Occupational sector; and Distance X Occupational sector are sig~ nificant. 2 Columns 2 and 3 of Table 2 present the effects of the variables on the formal and informal sector householder's decision to move or stay.

Compare the magnitudes of the effect of the variables on the decision to move or stay in the two sectors. The influence of the variable 'jati' on

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the decision to move among formal sector householders is not significant. The lower caste householders employed in the informal sector are more likely to decide to move than the upper castes. Net of other factors, the influence of the variable 'male head's birth place' on the decision to move among formal sector householders is not significant. It has a significant influence on the decision to move or stay among informal sector householders. Among these householders those born in the city are more likely to move. The formal sector householders in the city periphery are less likely to decide to move than those in the city core. The influence of this variable on the informal sector householder's decision to move is not significant. The formal sector householders are more likely to decide to move as their incomes increase. This influence is significant. The influence of income on the decision to move or stay among informal sector householders is not significant. Across the formal and informal sectors, the sets of variables which influence the decision to move or stay are different. 'Edu- cation of the male head of the household' is the only variable which has a significant impact (p< . l ) on the decision to move or stay among formal and informal sector householders.

In general, the results indicate that the two sectors are characterized by different processes which influence the householder's decision to move or stay. The influence of the variables such as Caste, Male head's birth place, and Residential location on the decision to move or stay differ by formal and informal sectors. One of the implications of these results for future research is that the occupational sector should be specified in an empirical mode[ of the decision to move or stay in developing societies.

This study has a few limitations. The first is concerned with the assumption that the formal sector occupations in Ahmedabad resemble their counterparts in the developed societies in work roles and status. Compara- tive studies have shown that in certain respects the formal sector occupations are similar in the developed and developing societies, for example, in the ranking of the occupations (Trieman, 1977). They are dissimilar in others. Myrdal (1970) has argued that many of the bureaucratic organiza- tions in the developing societies are soft; the bureaucracies use informal means for achieving organizational goals.

Second, there is the problem of classifying occupations into formal and informal sectors. The current categorization is admittedly crude because the characteristics of the occupations cannot be quantified.

The decision to move indicates that the householder is not satisfied with his current residential environment. The actual move may take place only when resources, such as dwell ing search information and economic resources for the move, can be realized. Several structural and social

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psychological factors may intervene between the decision to move or stay and actual residential mobility. The model presented here can be developed to include several endogenous variables in order to develop an actual model of residential mobility.

REFERENCE NOTES

1. A list of all the informal sector occupations in the survey population is available on request.

2. Copies of the table presenting the interaction effects of the variables on the householder's decision to move or to stay are available on request.

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correlates of "decision to move or stay" in ahmedabad, india

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