Do climate variations explain bilateral migration? A gravity model analysis

By Andreas Backhaus, Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso, Chris Muris. 2015

113 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper investigates to what extent international migration can be explained by climatic variations. A gravity model of migration augmented with average temperature and precipitation in the country of origin is estimated using a panel data set of 142 sending countries for the period 1995 to 2006. We find two primary results. First, temperature is positively correlated with migration. Second, stronger changes in precipitation are also associated with aligned, but small changes in migration. Both effects are robust to various model modifications. Furthermore, we present initial explorations into the channels relating climate changes with migration via agriculture and internal conflict.JEL CodesF22, Q54

Subfields: Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d761b695965e72d1338cd9d9c71b4bf71070c614

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In Sociology and Political Science

1. Lionel Jeusette
2. Michel Beine
3. Frédéric Docquier
4. Hillel Rapoport
5. Gordon H. Hanson

Citations in the corpus

• A meta-analysis of the literature on climate change and migration (2021, methodology): “A gravity model analysis Backhaus et al. (2015) 2015 1 9 Climatic factors as determinants of international migration Beine and Parsons (2015) 2015 1 45 Climate Variability and International Migration: an empirical analysis Coniglio and Pesce (2015) 2015 1 44 Natural Disasters, Migration and…”