Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries
This paper examines whether and how climatic shocks influence individual migration decisions. The authors use census microdata across 64 countries over the period 1960 to 2012, covering 442 million individual records, combined with geo-referenced t...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2022
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/099055001252216358/P173491-8fbaa9a6-8fb5-485c-90a6-f963a20ffd48 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36886 |
| Summary: | This paper examines whether and how
climatic shocks influence individual migration decisions.
The authors use census microdata across 64 countries over
the period 1960 to 2012, covering 442 million individual
records, combined with geo-referenced temperature and
precipitation data summarized for each origin and
destination administrative unit. Migration is identified
when an individual changed a place of usual residence one,
five, or ten years ago to a new major administrative unit in
the same country. Given an exceptionally large number of
observations, the authors apply a two-step approach to
analyze the relationship between exposure to climatic shocks
and migration. First, the authors use random forest models
to uncover that in many countries climatic shocks are as
important as better-known individual-level covariates in
determining migration decisions. This observation serves as
a yardstick for the second step of the analysis. For a
subset of countries, where rainfall shocks play an important
role in migration, the authors compare internal migration
patterns across time by examining whether a region
experiencing positive or negative rainfall shocks observed
higher or lower migration. The authors find that negative
rainfall shocks suppress outmigration particularly for
low-income countries. The opposite is true for positive
rainfall shocks whereby migration is found to increase,
especially for lower-income countries. The finding supports
the liquidity constraint argument whereby adverse climatic
conditions can disrupt migration financing and consequently
suppress ability to migrate. |
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