ABSTRACT
Panel data analysis provides some new insight on the increase in the unemployment rate in Kerala during 1998 to 2003. Panel analysis is a powerful method for estimating changes over a period of time that is, changes in the number of migrants, remittances, unemployment, etc. The uniqueness of panel data is that it measures changes during the inter-survey period with much less sampling bias. The main areas of analysis of the panel data were the same as those of the full data, namely estimation of migration, remittances, analysis of employment and unemployment, extent of the utilisation of household amenities, household durables, etc. The main contribution of the panel data is that it validated estimates of migration and remittances from the full data. Conventional sample surveys can at best provides standard errors of the various estimates. The analysis of panel data provides convincing evidence to conclude that estimates of migration at the state level were fairly accurate.
