Climate variability and migration in Mexico<?xml:namespace prefix = o />
Recent years have seen dramatic changes in the debate about the impacts of weather and weather shocks on human migration. Earlier demographic work and research focusing on likely impacts of climate change suggested that climate shocks prompted out-migration as individuals faced income loss from failed crops or crop-related employment. More recently, work in a variety of settings has shown mixed impacts of weather shocks on migration, including adverse weather sometimes decreasing and sometimes increasing migration, and adverse weather having varying impacts on short- or long-distance and short- or long-term migration. This paper builds on this existing work by examining impacts of climate variability and shocks on both short-term and long-term migration, and on the theoretically linked interhousehold transfers. We merge two waves of MxFLS data with gridded weather data covering the last 65 years, allowing us to test the impacts of long-term average climate and short-term deviations from long-term averages. Results show that both migration and transfers vary across regions with different long-term climates, and across years with different rainfall shocks. Migration and interhousehold transfer rates are higher in regions with higher long-term average rainfall and similarly higher in years when rainfall is above average, contrary to the traditional argument that rainfall deficit is associated with migration. These results contribute to a growing consensus that climate change is more likely to strand rural residents of developing countries in place rather than creating a wave of climate refugees.
