Boudot-Reddy, Camille and Butler, A. (2024) Watering the seeds of the rural economy: evidence from groundwater irrigation in India. World Bank Economic Review , ISSN 0258-6770.
|
Text
lhae041.pdf - Published Version of Record Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial. Download (852kB) | Preview |
Abstract
We study the impact of private investment in groundwater irrigation on the spatial and sectoral distribution of rural economic activity in India. Exploiting a kink in access to groundwater irrigation, generated from an absolute technological constraint on the operational capacity of irrigation pumps with depth of the water table, we find evidence of a significant improvement in agricultural production accompanied with modest consumption gains. Irrigation causes a substantial increase in population density, but has no effect on the employment rate or labour reallocation between sectors of the economy. Furthermore, irrigated agriculture appears to provide additional employment opportunities for waged labour from surrounding non-irrigated villages. Investigating the dynamic effects from adoption indicate important in-migration of labour in the short-run, as well as changes to fertility/mortality in the long to medium-run.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Business and Law > Birkbeck Business School |
| Research Centres and Institutes: | Applied Macroeconomics, Birkbeck Centre for |
| Depositing User: | Camille Boudot-Reddy |
| Date Deposited: | 12 Dec 2024 13:57 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Jul 2025 21:56 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/54706 |
Statistics
Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.
Archive Staff Only (login required)
