TY - JOUR
T1 - Climate variability and international migration
T2 - The importance of the agricultural linkage
AU - Cai, Ruohong
AU - Feng, Shuaizhang
AU - Oppenheimer, Michael
AU - Pytlikova, Mariola
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Jiandong Sun for excellent research assistance. We thank conference participants at the Heart-land Environmental and Resource Economics Workshop at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the 5th NORFACE Migration Conference, the SOLE 2014 annual conference in Arlington, and EALE 2014 annual conference in Ljubljana for extensive comments. We thank colleagues in Princeton University for helpful discussions and comments. We would like to also thank the editor and three anonymous referees for their comments and suggestions. This research was mainly conducted while Ruohong Cai was a Postdoctoral research associate with the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. Cai and Oppenheimer gratefully acknowledge support from the High Meadows Foundation . Feng׳s research is supported by the Chinese National Science Foundation for distinguished young scholars (Project Number: 71425005 ), Chang Jiang Scholars Program (Project number: T2012069 ) and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University ( NCET-12-0903 ) sponsored by the Ministry of Education of China . Pytlikova׳s research was supported by the Operational Programme Education for Competitiveness (No. CZ.1.07/2.3.00/20.0296 ), by a Czech Science Foundation grant (No. GA15-23177S ) and by an SGS Research grant (No. SP2015/120 ).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Inc.
PY - 2016/9/1
Y1 - 2016/9/1
N2 - While there is considerable interest in understanding the climate–migration relationship, particularly in the context of concerns about global climatic change, little is known about its underlying mechanisms. In the paper, we combine a rich panel data on annual bilateral international migration flows with an extensive data on climate variability across the countries to investigate in-depth the climate–migration link. We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between temperature and international outmigration only in the most agriculture-dependent countries, consistent with the widely documented adverse impact of temperature on agricultural productivity. Further, the temperature–migration relationship is nonlinear and resembles the nonlinear temperature–yield relationship. In addition, migration flows to current major destinations are especially temperature-sensitive. Policies to address issues related to climate-induced international migration would be more efficient if focused on the agriculture-dependent countries and especially people in those countries whose livelihoods depend on agriculture.
AB - While there is considerable interest in understanding the climate–migration relationship, particularly in the context of concerns about global climatic change, little is known about its underlying mechanisms. In the paper, we combine a rich panel data on annual bilateral international migration flows with an extensive data on climate variability across the countries to investigate in-depth the climate–migration link. We find a positive and statistically significant relationship between temperature and international outmigration only in the most agriculture-dependent countries, consistent with the widely documented adverse impact of temperature on agricultural productivity. Further, the temperature–migration relationship is nonlinear and resembles the nonlinear temperature–yield relationship. In addition, migration flows to current major destinations are especially temperature-sensitive. Policies to address issues related to climate-induced international migration would be more efficient if focused on the agriculture-dependent countries and especially people in those countries whose livelihoods depend on agriculture.
KW - Agricultural productivity
KW - International migration
KW - Nonlinear effect
KW - Temperature
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jeem.2016.06.005
DO - 10.1016/j.jeem.2016.06.005
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84989873755
SN - 0095-0696
VL - 79
SP - 135
EP - 151
JO - Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
JF - Journal of Environmental Economics and Management
ER -