Male Migration and Left-Behind Women’s Socioeconomic Outcomes

Women’s economic participation, physical mobility, and decision-making abilities foster inclusive development, reduce poverty, promote economic growth, and catalyze social progress. Using data from Phase II of the Odisha Migration Study 2023, this chapter studies the relationship between husbands’ migration and socioeconomic outcomes of left-behind wives, especially in resource-constrained regions of Odisha characterized by high migration. Our analytical sample includes married women aged 18–49 with valid data on their employment, physical mobility, and decision-making autonomy. We first estimate the associations between husbands’ migration and left-behind wives’ employment, mobility, and autonomy. Then, we explore the heterogeneity of these relationships based on woman-, husband-, and household-level characteristics. The findings reveal a positive association between husbands’ migration and left-behind wives’ employment outcomes, though no association is observed with their physical mobility and decision-making autonomy. Moreover, we find substantial variation in the relationship between husbands’ migration and wives’ mobility across woman- and household-level characteristics. This evidence highlights that the complex relationship between husbands’ migration and left-behind wives’ socioeconomic outcomes cannot be generalized in a singular direction. On the one hand, distress-driven migration of husbands compels left-behind women to take up employment to sustain household livelihoods in their husbands’ absence. On the other hand, this shift fails to translate into enhanced autonomy for these women due to the short-term nature of the migration.