Twelfth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between climate shocks and investments in social network relationships. I leverage fluctuating long run precipitation patterns across districts in India, to estimate household adaptive choices in terms of investments in social network relationships. I also leverage the frequency of climate shocks to estimate the impact of repeated negative climate events on social network relationships. I find that households that experience higher average negative precipitation shocks tend to invest more in family-caste (formal and informal) and vertical network relationships. These network relationships were also found to be associated with greater access to financial credit, higher reported collaboration, and greater use of private irrigation technologies, all of which are key to mitigating the negative impacts of climate shocks. Interestingly, villages with higher levels of average income, and households which were reported to be landowners were found to have higher investments in linked networks relative to other members of the sample. This suggests that wealth rather than caste status would be key for a household’s ability to access linked networks. Households that reside in locations which face repeated negative climate shocks tend to have lower investments in non-family-based or bridging networks such as in business associations, NGOs and self-help groups, which suggests that such networks are more vulnerable to repeated climate shocks.