Exploring the Climate Temperature Effects on Settlement Intentions of Older Migrants: Evidence from China

Abstract

Permanent migration across provinces in China has become an important strategy for Chinese older people to respond to a temperature-unfriendly place of residence in late life. However, the relation between temperature effects and permanent settlements of older migrants remains unclear. Based on the data obtained from China Migrants Dynamic Survey, this paper examined how four temperature effects (i.e., cold effect, heat effect, temperature gap effect, and temperature zone effect) play a role in shaping older migrants’ intentions to settle permanently in a destination place by conducting logistic regression analysis. Our findings show that: (1) extreme cold (rather than extreme heat or mild temperature) was found to have significant effects on settlement intentions of older people; (2) relative winter temperature between origin and destination places rather than absolute winter temperature in the destination place has a significant positive effect on the settlement intentions; (3) spatially, older migrants tend to migrate to geographically adjacent temperature zones. Our findings will inform a more effective planning and allocation of services for supporting older people by better understanding trends and intentions of older migrants.

Environmental health, economy, and amenities interactively drive migration patterns among China's older people

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A Study of the Relationship between Lithuanian International Migration Flows and Transport Sector Performance Indicators

“…Migration processes have a significant impact on the economy of countries, and when assessing the fact that these flows are created in areas with well-developed local urban transport, it is important to assess how the movement of these flows contributes to the development of transport-generated gross domestic product indicators. Since migration is the most volatile of all demographic components, modelling it is very difficult, although scientific articles analyse it from different perspectives [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. In addition, scientists mainly assess the impact of migration on the economy and analyze which types of transport are used and for what reasons, but there is a lack of assessment of how human migration (which is also linked to emigration) and immigration influence the indicators of specific sectors (e.g., transport) of countries.…”

The motivation of Chinese retirees moving to Thailand

“…From the information collected in online social media, we could find the majority of Chinese retirees come from the north of China. The existing study shows that extremely cold temperatures will drive older people's intention to migrate (Wang et al, 2022).…”