How Climate Change Leads to Emigration: Conditional and Long-run Effects

• In Event: Addressing Climate Change: NGOs, States, and People

Abstract

We study the effect of short-run weather shocks and long-run climate change on migration from 121 developing and emerging countries to 20 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. We find that any effect of weather or climate shocks on migration primarily materializes via increasing temperatures. Furthermore, our results show that the eventual effect of increasing temperatures on out-migration is conditional upon initial climate conditions in sending countries, which is likely to affect a country’s vulnerability and adaptability to weather shocks and climate change. Importantly, increasing temperatures only matter to low-skilled but not high-skilled migration (suggesting different migration calculi), are only influential in countries located in hotter parts of the world (consistent with the idea of different levels of vulnerability to climate change) and only materialize in the long run (pointing to the adverse impact of intensification effects due to persistent climate change).

Authors

• Marc Helbling, University of Mannheim

• Daniel Meierrieks, WZB Berlin Social Science Center