The Effect of Weather-Induced Internal Migration on Local Labor Markets. Evidence from Uganda

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Relying on census data collected in 2002 and historical weather data for Uganda, we estimate the impact of weather-induced internal migration on the probability for non-migrants living in the destination regions to be employed. Our results reveal a significant negative impact. Consistent with the prediction of a simple theoretical model, they further show that this negative impact is significantly stronger in regions with lower road density and therefore less conducive to capital mobility: a 10 percentage points increase in the net in-migration rate in these areas decreases the probability of being employed of non-migrants by more than 20 percentage points.JEL Classification: E24, J21, J61, Q54, R23

Environmental Migration and Labor Markets in Nepal

“…Strobl and Valfort (2015) find a decline of 0.78 (1.03 for regions with low road density) in Uganda associated with an increase in 1 percentage point of in-migration. Employment effects are not reported in El Badaoui et al (2014), but Kleemans and Magruder (2014) detect a 0.26 percentage point change in the individual probability of employment.…”

“…The literature points to overall gains for nonmigrants due to skill complementarity, with modest negative effects for the unskilled workers or those at the lower end of the wage distribution (Ottaviano and Peri 2012;Dustmann et al 2013). In developing countries, scant evidence exists on how migration affects receiving communities, let alone the implications of disaster-driven migration (El Badaoui, Strobl, and Walsh 2014;Kleemans and Magruder 2014;Strobl and Valfort 2015). We address this knowledge gap by investigating the impact of weather-driven, internal migration on labor markets in Nepal.…”

Climate variability and inter-provincial migration in South America, 1970–2011

“…Evidence that climatic changes drive migration to rural areas may suggest that affected persons are adapting via simple geographic diversification (e.g., shifts from on-farm labor to agricultural wage labor in another region), but moves to urban areas would suggest both geographic and livelihood diversification (e.g., shifts out of agriculture entirely). The difference between such strategies has clear implications for integration and economic outcomes among migrants (including their ability to remit resources back to their origin), as well as for the impacts in receiving communities (Strobl & Valfort, 2015; Maystadt et al, forthcoming). Overall then, the existing literature on this topic has become increasingly sophisticated and robust in recent years, but existing results paint a complicated picture when considered as a whole.…”

“…Evidence regarding the composition of climate-induced migration is also necessary to assess the likely social and economic consequences of these migration streams. Recent evidence shows that environmentally-induced migration in developing countries can bear negative consequences on the wages of residents in the receiving communities (Strobl & Valfort, 2015; Maystadt et al, forthcoming). Yet exactly who these migrants will affect depends on where they go and what skillset they bring to the destination, a question that has motivated large bodies of research on migration in general (Aydemir & Borjas 1994; Sjaastad, 1962; Todaro 1969).…”

An Analysis of the Reasons of Internal Migration in Turkey with Logit Method

“…Additionally, Connell et al (1975) and Gökhan & Filiztekin (2008) reached a conclusion that income distribution is the main determinant of the internal migration. Furthermore, Cebula (2005) and Strobl & Valfort (2015) determined that higher unemployment rate influences migration.…”