Cumulative Climate Shocks and Migratory Flows: Evidence from Sub-Saharan Africa

Understanding the Climate Change-Migration Nexus through the Lens of Household Surveys: An Empirical Review to Assess Data Gaps

“…Finally, in a recent working paper, Di Falco, Kis, and Viarengo (2022) exploit LSMS-ISA panel data from Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, and Uganda (see also Section 4) combined with high-resolution precipitation data to study the effects of cumulative climate shocks on long-term migratory flows in Sub-Saharan Africa. Overall they find evidence of a persistent impact of droughts on rural households in these countries, which translates into a much larger effect on migration compared to the period in the aftermath of the shock as the impacts accumulate over time.…”

“…To investigate climate-related migration outcomes, accurate and georeferenced weather information is needed. However, most household surveys include, at best, self-reported measures of weather shocks based on individuals' recalls, which can hardly be reliable or comparable given their d'Errico et al, 2019;Letta et al, 2018;Di Falco et al, 2022).…”

“…It also explains why there are only a couple of cross-country investigations on the climate-migration links which uses LSMS-ISA, the analysis by and the one by Di Falco et al (2022). In both cases, due to comparable and precise information about migration not being available for all the countries, the studies have to rely on proxies to define different types of migrations.…”

“…Our literature search on the number of works on migration and climate change which used LSMS-ISA data returned only five papers, four of which published in peer-reviewed journals: Ocello et al (2015); Kubik and Morel (2016), Mueller at al. (2020), Becerra-Valbuena andMillock (2021), and the recent working paper by Di Falco et al (2022). 13 Ocello et al (2015) and Kubik and Morel (2016) both focus on Tanzania, and employ the LSMS-ISA National Panel Surveys.…”

“…Di Falco et al (2022) use LSMS-ISA data to construct a multi-country panel data set covering Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, and Uganda that is merged with high-resolution gridded precipitation historical records from the Climate Research Unit to analyze the effects of cumulative drought shocks on the decision to migrate in rural households. While confirming the existence of an immediate, although small, impact on migration decisions in the aftermath (i.e., the subsequent year) of a severe and extreme drought shock, they interestingly show that this impact is long-lasting, increasing migration for at least five years after the shock occurs, and not even fading or diminishing over time.…”