While human trafficking often conjures up images of victims being taken by force, in reality, a minority of today’s slave population are physically abducted. Rather, a significant share of human trafficking victims are ‘‘pushed’’ (e.g., trying to escape crisis conditions) or ‘‘pulled’’ (e.g., pursuing the prospect of economic opportunities) into situations of high risk. This study focuses on those who are ‘‘pulled’’ into risky scenarios, assessing when individuals make decisions that may put themselves at risk. I assume that individuals are boundedly rational, and propose an aspiration-based model of decision-making, which predicts that increased sal- ience in relative deprivation can lead individuals to be more risk-seeking, putting themselves and their children at greater risk for exploitation. Using both an original survey experiment and nationally-representative data in Nepal, I find that consistent with the theoretical model, perceptions of relative deprivation induce more risk- seeking behavior. This result speaks to the interaction between inequality and risk tolerance, and how economic and social forces that alter perceived relative depri- vation can increase vulnerability to exploitation. modern forms of slavery and other forms of exploitation (Thomas 2002). However, poverty is neither a necessary nor sufficient reason for being vulnerable to exploitation. There are poor-and-less vulnerable individuals and poor-and-very vulnerable individuals, and unveiling the factors that separate the two groups is important to understanding human trafficking vulnerability (Thomas 2002). Moreover, human trafficking can occur irrespective of economic status (Chamber- lain 2004). This observation raises the following question: Apart from poverty, what additional factors can explain variation in individuals’ vulnerability levels?
Extant research on modern forms of slavery has focused on economic, political, and social contexts (or structural factors like market downturns), along with the interaction of contextual factors with policy and governance issues (or proximate factors like poor law enforcement) to understand why some individuals are vulnerable to trafficking (Newman and Cameron 2007). Certainly, each stream of inquiry highlights what may ‘‘push’’ or ‘‘pull’’ individuals into high-risk situations (Bales 2007). What is not highlighted in previous research is the potential role of relative deprivation—when individuals view their situations as less than a community standard. In this study, I consider whether differences in people’s perceived sense of relative deprivation is an important structural factor that can explain some of the variation in people’s vulnerability levels. What if increasing perceptions of one’s relative poverty drive individuals to make decisions that put themselves and their families more at risk for undesirable outcomes like being trafficked?