source is not suitable for analyzing effects by cause of death. The cause of death in the FEPB database is the official cause of death listed in their death certificate issued in the destination countries. The causes of death might have been tampered with to avoid insurance and other hassles (legal hassle for employers, detailed medical procedure to determine the exact causes, delays in dead body repatriation for the family of the deceased). The prevalence and variance of ‘natural’ cause of death of adult young male across different destinations is an evidence of the dubious quality of information on the cause of death of Nepali migrant workers (Figure 4). Hence, I do not pursue any analysis on the cause of death.

The data suggest very low and fairly constant mortality rate of Nepali workers abroad. I compute death rate by using the counts from the FEPB database and estimated migrant stock in each month in the destination countries. To estimate the migrant stock, I assume that migrants to the Persian Gulf countries return after 2 years and migrants to Malaysia return after 2.5 years. Using this rule in migrant outflow database from DoFE, I obtain net flow of migrants to each destination in each month. The census of 2011 provides a snapshot of the migrant stock for June of 2011 in each of these destinations. This, along with the net flow of migrants provides an estimate of the migrant stock in each destination for each month.<sup>7</sup> The estimated overall two-year mortality rate is 1.3 per thousand migrant workers in 2013, which is slightly higher than the rate of 1.16 per thousand worker in 2010.<sup>8</sup> Though the estimated magnitude of the rate is slightly higher in 2013 compared to 2010, the plot of smoothened death rates suggests that migrant death rates remained fairly constant throughout the study period (Figure 5). The figure also shows that death rates in Malaysia and Saudi Arabia are slightly higher than death rates in Qatar and the UAE.

# **3 Empirical strategy**

I use a triple difference estimator to estimate the effect of death of a particular individual from origin district _o_ in destination country _d_ in month _t_ in the outflow of migrants (and other outcomes) from the district to the same destination in the months following month _t_ . In an event study framework, I estimate where _yodt_ is the outcome for origin (district)- destination (country) cell at time (in months) _t_ measured in months. _Dod,t−i_ is a dummy variable which indicator whether anyone from the district _o_ died in destination _d_ at time _t − i_ . The coefficients _τi_ s are normalized so that it is zero at time _t −_ 1. _αod_ captures origin-destination fixed effects, _γot_ captures time (monthly) fixed effects for each district, and _ξtd_ captures destination country specific time fixed effects. I cluster standard errors at the district level allowing for arbitrary correlation in errors terms across months and destinations for a district.

> 7This estimation assumes that no workers return before the expiration of their contract, or over-stay their contract illegally. Since it is impossible to get the data on such incidences, I make no adjustments for them. The effects of such irregularities in the stock of migrants, and hence the death rates, are likely to be negligible.

> 8To keep this rate in perspective, the two-year mortality rate of Nepali men in Nepal with the same age distribution as this sample is 4.6 per thousand. The two-year mortality rate of US men with the same age distribution is 2.8 per thousand.

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