members across state borders. Households that do not possess the requisite documentation have little to lose and are therefore more likely to migrate across states.

The same regression analysis based on the IHDS also shows that SC/ST households are less likely to have nonresidents who migrated across states. Controlling for a range of household and household head characteristics, there is no statistically significant relationship between a household’s social group and the probability of having a nonresident member. However, when the sample is restricted to migrants who have moved across states, the coefficient on the SC/ST dummy variable is negative and significant (see Appendix Table 3). This suggests that SC/ST households are less likely to have a nonresident member who migrated across states. It may simply reflect the fact that SC/ST households are poorer and moving across states is more expensive. But the level of household consumption is included as an explanatory variable in the regression equation. It therefore possibly reflects the lure of reserved seats on state educational institutes and public sector jobs. The same results hold true when we restrict the stock of nonresidents to “absent students” only.

State domicile requirements for employment in government entities could act as a disincentive to move across states, especially for highly educated individuals. Under India's policy of affirmative action, the employment quota for SCs and STs in state government jobs is equal to their respective shares of a state's population<sup>16</sup> (Howard and Prakash, 2012). Therefore, to be eligible for the SC/ST employment quota in a particular state, an individual has to be domiciled in that state. Some states even have quotas that cut across communities. For example, Karnataka announced a policy in 2016 under which both private or public sector firms would have to reserve 70 percent of their jobs for state residents to be eligible for any state government industrial policy benefits. Orissa, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh have similar quotas for state residents in factory jobs (Kone et al., 2016). Therefore, educated individuals, especially but not only those belonging to SC/ST communities, would care about remaining eligible for employment opportunities in their home state government.

The literature suggests that state domicile requirements to access reserved government jobs can be a disincentive for interstate migration of the individuals who are most likely to benefit from it. Kone et al. (2016) show that the share of in-state skilled emigration<sup>17</sup> is positively and significantly associated with the share of high-skilled workers who are employed by the public sector at the state level (controlling for average household income per capita). This suggests that the higher is the share of government job opportunities for the high-skilled, the stronger is the incentive for potential migrants to stay in their home states.

State-based quotas in public universities and technical institutes could also act as a disincentive for people to move across states. State residents get preferential access to state-run institutes of higher education through state quota seats. For example, in 2004, 50 percent of the seats in all state-level engineering colleges and medical colleges in Tamil Nadu were under the state quota. Similarly, in the state of Maharashtra, the current state quota in state-level medical colleges varies from 70 to 100 percent (Kone et al., 2016). Domicile “certificates” issued by state governments

> 16 In 1999, on average 25 percent of employment in state-level government jobs was reserved for SCs. 17 The number of high-skilled (i.e., those who completed at least secondary education) emigrants who moved to destinations within the state of their origin, divided by the total number of high-skilled migrants from that state.

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