Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration: Redux

Abstract

In this paper, we revisit the issue of environmental change as a potential determinant of international migration, thereby providing an extension of our earlier paper. In contrast to Beine and Parsons (2015) and in light of recent empirical contributions, we adopt an alternative identification strategy in which we only include fixed effects together with our measures of climatic change in order to quantify the net partial effect of climatic change on bilateral migration. Again drawing on panel data from 1960-2000, we further exploit the dyadic dimension of our data to highlight the importance of neighbouring countries and former colonial powers in determining the direction of climate-induced emigration. We additionally highlight the importance of how differences in modelling climate change can lead to differing results. Our baseline results suggest that climatic change affects individuals' credit constraints more than their desire to move. Our key findings are that natural disasters deter emigration from all origin countries but importantly spur emigration to neighbouring countries while for middle income origins, natural disasters while deterring migration, foster emigration to former colonial powers.

Climate variability and international migration: an empirical analysis

“…Our analysis is closely related to a recent study by Beine and Parsons (2013) who do not find evidence of direct impacts of climate anomalies on international migration but only an indirect effect through international wage differentials. As in the present analysis, the authors investigate the role of environmental changes as a push factor of bilateral international migration using a global panel data set on migrants' stocks for the period 1960–2000.…”

“…Their analysis has the advantage of using a longer time span and a more comprehensive set of origin/destination countries, 4 but at the cost of measuring both migration flows and climatic shocks over a rather long time period (10-year intervals). In this respect, our study and that of Beine and Parsons (2013) are highly complementary to each other. In fact, as stated by the authors, there is a tradeoff between the ‘geographic coverage and the frequency of observations’.…”

Climate Change and Migration

“…In their analysis, they consider both short-run extreme events such as natural disasters and long-run change in decade-long average temperature and precipitation. The authors extend their analysis in Beine and Parsons (2017). They find natural disasters generally deter emigration in poor and middle-income countries, but spur the poor to migrate to contiguous countries or former colonizers.…”

A Model of Tacit Collusion: Nash-2 Equilibrium Concept

“…This paper explores the effects of natural shocks on migration in the Kyrgyz Republic, where households face income fluctuations due to natural factors. Using Life in Kyrgyzstan panel data 3 (waves 2010-2013), we investigate if there are any effects of natural disasters, such as droughts, floods, cold winters, landslides and earthquakes, on migration participation by Kyrgyz rural household members. We use self-reported shocks aggregated at the community level 4 as shock measures and find either negative or insignificant effects of the shocks on migration participation.…”

“…This paper contributes to the growing literature on the impact of climate variability on international migration. Even though there are a large number of studies investigating how 3 Brück, T., D. Esenaliev, A. Kroeger, A. Kudebayeva, B. M irkasimov and S. Steiner (2014): "Household Survey Data for Research on Well-Being and Behavior in Central Asia". Journal of Comparative Economics, vol.…”