Are Human Rights and Economic Well-Being Substitutes? Evidence from Migration Patterns across the Indian States

The aim of the paper is to study the relation between the demand for human rights and foreconomic prosperity. It analyzes the demand not, as it is often done in the literature, from the“voice” perspective (political activity), but rather looks at the “exit” perspective (migrationpatterns). Given the difficulties associated with identification in international samples westudy the intra-national migration in a federation with significant economic and political differencesbetween states – India. The paper finds that quality of human rights protection andeconomic well-being are substitutes when determining the patterns of migration: lower numberof human rights violations acts as a “pull” factor for individual states only if the incomeper capita is small enough; increasing economic well-being political regimes seem to be ableto “buy acceptance” of the lower quality of human rights. The results are robust to variousspecifications and estimation approaches.