The Migration Response to Increasing Temperatures

NBER Working Paper No. 21622

Issued in October 2015

NBER Program(s):Development Economics, Environment and Energy Economics, Labor Studies



Climate change, especially the warming trend experienced by several countries, could affect agricultural productivity. As a consequence the income of rural populations will change, and with them the incentives for people to remain in rural areas. Using data from 116 countries between 1960 and 2000, we analyze the effect of differential warming trends across countries on the probability of either migrating out of the country or from rural to urban areas. We find that higher temperatures increased emigration rates to urban areas and to other countries in middle income economies. In poor countries, higher temperatures reduced the probability of emigration to cities or to other countries, consistently with the presence of severe liquidity constraints. In middle-income countries, migration represents an important margin of adjustment to global warming, potentially contributing to structural change and even increasing income per worker. Such a mechanism, however, does not seem to work in poor economies.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21622

Published: Cattaneo, Cristina & Peri, Giovanni, 2016. "The migration response to increasing temperatures," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 127-146. citation courtesy of

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