How climate change leads to emigration: Conditional and long‐run effects

Abstract

We study the effect of climate change on migration from 121 developing and emerging countries to 20 OECD countries between 1980 and 2010. In contrast to earlier studies, we differentiate between low‐ and high‐skilled migrants to account for the fact that not all groups are equally vulnerable and responsive to climate change. This is also the first study that uses a long‐difference approach. That is, in contrast to earlier studies that investigate short‐term weather changes or weather‐related disasters, we also estimate the effect of climate change on migration over longer time periods. We find that both increasing temperatures and precipitation levels matter to the patterns of migration. We show that increasing temperatures only lead 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). Furthermore, we provide evidence that low‐skilled out‐migration is also responsive to short‐ and long‐run precipitation changes.

Unraveling the Complexities of Climate Change and Environment Migration: A Transformers-Based Topic Modelling Approach

“…The International ow of climate migrants cluster comprises studies that focus on measuring the environmental in uence on migration patterns. Most papers in this cluster adopt a quantitative approach (78%) with an international scope (68%), aiming to explain and predict the impact of climate variability on migration dynamics, along with its social and economic consequences [50][51][52] .…”

Do People Migrate Due to Climate Change? A Comparative Analysis for Romania and Poland

“…Migration induced by climate change was also studied by Helbling & Meierrieks (2021). The dataset included 121 origin countries and 20 OECD destination countries for the interval of time 1980-2010.…”

Measuring the effect of climate change on migration flows: Limitations of existing data and analytical frameworks

“…Migration and climate change have become two of the most salient political and social issues over the last decades, with research on their relationship now abundant. While some studies find that climate change influences migration flows [1], others either do not [2] or reveal just indirect effects [3,4]. Recent meta-analyses by [5][6][7] have shown that most studies find that effects are dependent on specific contexts.…”