Appendix A.3.2 World Bank SAR COVID-19 Phone Monitoring Surveys

coVId And mIgRAtIon In soutH AsIA

returning migrants and new household members, such as daughters-in-law after marriage, which is common in India

The survey is typically conducted face to face but owing to the COVID lockdown in India after the third week of March, the face-to-face interview format was replaced with a telephonic format, allowing the Center for Monitoring Indian Economy to continue gathering data. Response rates dropped from an average of approximately 80 percent in the early months of the pandemic to 64 percent in wave 19 and 44 percent in wave 20 but recovered again to 70 percent by wave 21. Sample weights and weights to adjust for non-response ensure that the data are representative of the population across all waves (Vyas 2020). However, CPHS does not provide sample weights for household members who migrate out of the household, so non-response cannot be adjusted for in all analyses in which migration statistics are used. To the extent that households with migrants were less or more likely to respond to the survey during the COVID period than households with no migrants, migration might have been slightly over- or underestimated.

Appendix A.3.2 World Bank SAR COVID-19 Phone Monitoring Surveys

COVID-19-induced lockdowns in countries in South Asia greatly reduced mobility, which in turn affected economic outcomes in these countries. Soon after the initial COVID shock, the World Bank launched the SAR COVID-19 Phone Monitoring Survey to explore the effects of the pandemic on labor market outcomes. The first round of the survey was conducted 5 to 12 months after the first lockdown was imposed (depending on the country) and the second round approximately 20 months after the first lockdown was imposed. For the purposes of this analysis, baseline is defined as January 2020 (before lockdowns). The first round of the survey covered 44,880 individuals28 from all eight South Asian countries (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), and the second round covered 1,370 individuals from four South Asian countries (Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka). In this analysis, a migrant is defined as a person residing in a different location in the same country at the time of the survey than before the lockdowns in March 2020.29 It is not possible to distinguish new migrants from return migrants using this definition of mobility; some of the migration observed here might include return migration.

28 Respondents were selected using random digit dialing, and geographic quotas on sub-national sample sizes were used. At least 30 percent of the respondents were required to be female. 29 In the Maldives, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, migration can be measured within and between provinces but not within a district.