Fragile Finance, Unstable Livelihoods: Financial Buffers, Coastal Exposure and Survey Measurement in South India
Keywords:
coastal livelihoods, household finance, small-scale fisheries, measurement harmonization, economic vulnerabilityAbstract
This article reassesses economic stability and financial fragility among 384 coastal fishing households in Ramanathapuram, Tamil Nadu, and Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. The inquiry integrates household finance, occupational adjustment, post-harvest exposure and institutional indicators using a harmonization-first empirical strategy. The two original district files each contain 192 respondents, but several financial variables have different measurement scales across districts, and existing published descriptive and regression values do not reproduce directly from these records. Accordingly, cross-district rupee comparisons for savings and income are withheld pending a codebook, while eight consistently coded two-category items are analysed transparently as response categories. Chi-square comparisons and a parsimonious logistic specification show strong geographic differences in responses, with a site-adjusted association for the livelihood-stability response category but no independently precise coefficient for most included household items. Findings concern conditional patterns in a purposive cross-section, not causal effects of debt, savings or government programmes. This audit establishes how careful coding, sensitivity analysis and inference boundaries are essential to credible policy evidence on coastal livelihoods
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