Extreme Weather Events and Internal Migration: Causal Evidence from Global Micro-Level Data

Hamid Oskorouchi, University of Palermo
Chiara Puglisi, University of Bologna
Annalisa Busetta, University of Palermo
William Kemp, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
Giulana La Mantia , University of Genoa, Department of political and international sciences

Migration has long served as an adaptive response to environmental change. Numerous empirical studies have highlighted the significant impact of environmental stress on migration, particularly within national borders and from rural to urban areas. However, environmental factors are rarely the sole driver of mobility. Rather, they interact with complex socio-economic, political, and demographic factors that influence the decision to migrate. By employing harmonized georeferenced IPUMS micro-level data (covering 21 countries across different world regions between 1971 and 2019, both at the household and individual levels), coupled with rasterized information on extreme climate conditions (standardized precipitation–evapotranspiration index), this study aims to assess the impact of environmental stressors on the probability that a household undertakes internal migration. Our preliminary results show that exposure to climatic anomalies in the region of origin (both very wet conditions and severe droughts) positively associate with a higher probability of undertaking internal migration. The large sample size and the great heterogeneity of our sample not only allow us to empirically test a set of channels behind this effect (e.g., agricultural dependency, income levels, and population structure), but also to establish causal effects by adopting a staggered difference-in-differences identification strategy.

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 Presented in Session P13. Climate Shocks, Migration and Mobility