International Research Fellowship Program: Social Protection in the Informal Sector: The Links Between Social and Economical Insecurity in Urban India

Kantor Paula L, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

0301856 Kantor The International Research Fellowship Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad. This award will support a seven month research fellowship by Dr. Paula L. Kantor to work with Dr. Jeemol Unni of Gujarat Institute of Development Studies in Ahmedabad, India. This study will examine the links between social (i.e. Illness, floods, food insecurity) and economic (i.e. irregular work, low skills) insecurities among informal workers in urban India. It is set within a framework of social protection programs for informal workers and aims to provide knowledge of the range of economic and social insecurities faced by this group, their interlinkages, and variations in both these things across work types and social groups. Such knowledge will assist in developing social protection programs that meet these workers' needs in the most effective manner. The PI will collect both qualitative and quantitative data to evaluate the insecurities and their linkages. Qualitative data will provide an in depth assessment of the connections between the types of insecurities. This will be linked to more generalized quantitative data on work characteristics, individual capacities, access to support mechanisms and productive assets, living conditions, health status, demographics and experiences of life cycle and crisis events. Individual workers will be the units of analysis; they will be sampled to represent prominent work types in the informal sector of a selected city. It is expected that greater economic insecurity will increase experiences of social insecurity, with more economically insecure work types, such as casual laborers and piece rate workers, having greater difficulty meeting basic needs and being more exposed to intermittent events that create setbacks. Social identity will intervene in these experiences, with women and low caste workers experiencing them more intensely. The results of this study will have a substantial impact on policy and program development.