Climatic Factors as Determinants of International Migration

We examine natural disasters and long-run climatic factors as potential determinants of international migration, implementing a panel dataset of bilateral migration flows from 1960 to 2000. We find no direct effect of long-run climatic factors on international migration across our entire sample. The...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Scandinavian journal of economics 2015-04, Vol.117 (2), p.723-767
Main Authors: Beine, Michel, Parsons, Christopher
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accounting
Climate change
Determinants
Disasters
Environmental change
Environmentalism
Epidemics
F22
International migration
Manycountries
Migration
MIGRATION AND DEVELOPMENT
Natural disasters
O15
Socioeconomic factors
Studies
utility maximization
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Summary:We examine natural disasters and long-run climatic factors as potential determinants of international migration, implementing a panel dataset of bilateral migration flows from 1960 to 2000. We find no direct effect of long-run climatic factors on international migration across our entire sample. These results are robust when conditioning on origin-country characteristics, when considering migrants returning home, and when accounting for the potential endogeneity of migrant networks. Rather, we find evidence of indirect effects of environmental factors operating through wages. We find that epidemics and miscellaneous incidents spur international migration, and there is strong evidence that natural disasters beget greater flows of migrants to urban environs.
ISSN:0347-0520
1467-9442
DOI:10.1111/sjoe.12098