Climatic Variability and Internal Migration in Asia: Evidence from Big Microdata

Brian Thiede, Pennsylvania State University
Abbie Robinson , The Pennsylvania State University
Clark Gray, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The potential effects of climate change on human migration have received widespread attention, driven in part by concerns about large-scale population displacements. Recent studies demonstrate that climate-migration linkages are often complex, and climatic variability may increase, decrease, or have null effects on migration. However, the use of non-comparable analytic strategies across studies makes it difficult to disentangle substantive variation in climate effects from methodological artifacts. We address this gap by using census and survey micro-data from six Asian countries (n=54,987,838) to measure climate effects on interprovincial migration, overall and among sub-populations defined by age, sex, education, and country. We also evaluate whether climate effects differ according to the distance and type of move. We find non-linear precipitation effects across the sample, with exposure to precipitation deficits leading to substantively large reductions in out-migration. Both precipitation and temperature effects vary among focal sub-populations. Precipitation deficits reduce internal migration to both adjacent and non-adjacent provinces and also reduce the probability of work-related moves in the countries that the reason for migration is measured. Temperature anomalies reduce work-, education-, and family-related moves. Our findings provide evidence of climate-related reductions in migration and suggest these effects are driven largely by economic factors.

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 Presented in Session P11. Climate Change Impacts in the Global South