Impact of commuting by workers on household dietary diversity in rural India

•This paper analyzes the importance of employment patterns and workforce structure in rural areas on household welfare.•We analyse the impact of commuting by workers on the dietary diversity of rural households in India.•Using propensity score methods, we show that household with commuters have higher dietary diversity.•Households with workers having no fixed place of work are worse off than households with no commuters.•We find differences in dietary diversity across households by their primary source of income.

Drawing insights from the literature on transformation of rural non-farm employment, pathways from agriculture to nutrition, and linkages between migration and nutritional status of household, we seek to understand differences in dietary diversity across three mutually exclusive types of rural Indian households: where all members work in rural areas, at least one member commutes to urban areas, at least one member has no fixed place of work. Our analysis is based on a nationally representative data set from India for the year 2009-10 and we use propensity score matching methods. We find that as compared to households with no commuters, households with rural-urban commuters have higher dietary diversity; whereas households with no fixed place workers have lower dietary diversity. We also find differences in dietary diversity across households which differ by their primary source of income.