Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries

This paper examines whether and how climatic shocks influence individual migration decisions. The authors use census microdata across 64 countries over the period 1960 to 2012, covering 442 million individual records, combined with geo-referenced t...

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Main Authors:	Abel, Guy J., Muttarak, Raya, Stephany, Fabian
Format:	Working Paper
Language:	English
Published:	World Bank, Washington, DC 2022
Subjects:	CLIMATE CHANGE INTERNAL MIGRATION CLIMATE SHOCK CLIMATE RESILIENCE MIGRATION DRIVERS CENSUS DATA RANDOM FOREST MODEL MACHINE LEARNING
Online Access:	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/099055001252216358/P173491-8fbaa9a6-8fb5-485c-90a6-f963a20ffd48 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36886

id	okr-10986-36886
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	okr-10986-368862022-01-29T05:10:42Z Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries Abel, Guy J. Muttarak, Raya Stephany, Fabian CLIMATE CHANGE INTERNAL MIGRATION CLIMATE SHOCK CLIMATE RESILIENCE MIGRATION DRIVERS CENSUS DATA INTERNAL MIGRATION RANDOM FOREST MODEL MACHINE LEARNING This paper examines whether and how climatic shocks influence individual migration decisions. The authors use census microdata across 64 countries over the period 1960 to 2012, covering 442 million individual records, combined with geo-referenced temperature and precipitation data summarized for each origin and destination administrative unit. Migration is identified when an individual changed a place of usual residence one, five, or ten years ago to a new major administrative unit in the same country. Given an exceptionally large number of observations, the authors apply a two-step approach to analyze the relationship between exposure to climatic shocks and migration. First, the authors use random forest models to uncover that in many countries climatic shocks are as important as better-known individual-level covariates in determining migration decisions. This observation serves as a yardstick for the second step of the analysis. For a subset of countries, where rainfall shocks play an important role in migration, the authors compare internal migration patterns across time by examining whether a region experiencing positive or negative rainfall shocks observed higher or lower migration. The authors find that negative rainfall shocks suppress outmigration particularly for low-income countries. The opposite is true for positive rainfall shocks whereby migration is found to increase, especially for lower-income countries. The finding supports the liquidity constraint argument whereby adverse climatic conditions can disrupt migration financing and consequently suppress ability to migrate. 2022-01-28T15:55:17Z 2022-01-28T15:55:17Z 2022-01-27 Working Paper http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/099055001252216358/P173491-8fbaa9a6-8fb5-485c-90a6-f963a20ffd48 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36886 English CC BY 3.0 IGO http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo World Bank World Bank, Washington, DC Publications & Research Publications & Research :: Working Paper
repository_type	Digital Repository
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	Digital Repositories
building	World Bank Open Knowledge Repository
collection	World Bank
language	English
topic	CLIMATE CHANGE INTERNAL MIGRATION CLIMATE SHOCK CLIMATE RESILIENCE MIGRATION DRIVERS CENSUS DATA INTERNAL MIGRATION RANDOM FOREST MODEL MACHINE LEARNING
spellingShingle	CLIMATE CHANGE INTERNAL MIGRATION CLIMATE SHOCK CLIMATE RESILIENCE MIGRATION DRIVERS CENSUS DATA INTERNAL MIGRATION RANDOM FOREST MODEL MACHINE LEARNING Abel, Guy J. Muttarak, Raya Stephany, Fabian Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries
description	This paper examines whether and how climatic shocks influence individual migration decisions. The authors use census microdata across 64 countries over the period 1960 to 2012, covering 442 million individual records, combined with geo-referenced temperature and precipitation data summarized for each origin and destination administrative unit. Migration is identified when an individual changed a place of usual residence one, five, or ten years ago to a new major administrative unit in the same country. Given an exceptionally large number of observations, the authors apply a two-step approach to analyze the relationship between exposure to climatic shocks and migration. First, the authors use random forest models to uncover that in many countries climatic shocks are as important as better-known individual-level covariates in determining migration decisions. This observation serves as a yardstick for the second step of the analysis. For a subset of countries, where rainfall shocks play an important role in migration, the authors compare internal migration patterns across time by examining whether a region experiencing positive or negative rainfall shocks observed higher or lower migration. The authors find that negative rainfall shocks suppress outmigration particularly for low-income countries. The opposite is true for positive rainfall shocks whereby migration is found to increase, especially for lower-income countries. The finding supports the liquidity constraint argument whereby adverse climatic conditions can disrupt migration financing and consequently suppress ability to migrate.
format	Working Paper
author	Abel, Guy J. Muttarak, Raya Stephany, Fabian
author_facet	Abel, Guy J. Muttarak, Raya Stephany, Fabian
author_sort	Abel, Guy J.
title	Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries
title_short	Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries
title_full	Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries
title_fullStr	Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries
title_full_unstemmed	Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries
title_sort	climatic shocks and internal migration : evidence from 442 million personal records in 64 countries
publisher	World Bank, Washington, DC
publishDate	2022
url	http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/undefined/099055001252216358/P173491-8fbaa9a6-8fb5-485c-90a6-f963a20ffd48 http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36886
_version_	1764486098650660864

Climatic Shocks and Internal Migration : Evidence from 442 Million Personal Records in 64 Countries

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