Climate Change, Agriculture and Migration: Evidence from Bangladesh

Team member: KaziIqbal, Paritosh K. Roy

Changes in climatic variables influence households’ decision regarding livelihood options and strategies to mitigate income shocks. Among others, migration is one the most frequently adopted coping strategies the affected people use. This paper studies how the changes in climatic variables such as temperature and rainfall impact migration through agriculture. Using district level data (64 districts) for 3 inter-census periods (1974-1980, 1981-1990 and 1991-2000), Fixed Effect and IV results show that about one standard deviation decrease in real per capita revenue increases net out-migration rate by 1.4  to 2.4 percent, controlling for unobserved effects for district and year. Using our estimates and the available forecasts in the literature, we predict that the net out-migration rate will be about 22 percent higher in 2030 than in 1990, assuming the variability of temperature will be stable and there will be no behavioural response from the farmers. 

This study is funded by The South Asian Network for Development and Environmental Economics (SANDEE)