Extreme weather events and rural-to-urban migration

Abstract

In numerous regions around the globe, climate change can be expected to change the pattern of severe weather events. The nature of future changes in these patterns can be difficult to predict, but it is instructive to consider some of the potential consequences of extreme weather on household migration decisions based on past events. We examine county-to-county migration decisions in the U.S., treating various types of extreme weather events as random exogenous shocks to the affected communities and their economies. We are particularly interested in whether rural-to-urban migration flows are altered systematically in the wake of extreme weather events. We explore a variety of specifications for a panel of roughly half a million significant annual U.S. county-to-county flows. Our models demonstrate that the effects of a number of different types of extreme weather events (i.e. flooding, heat waves, and wildfires) in the origin county on county-to-county migration flows is statistically significantly greater when the destination county is relatively more urbanized. The effect of the number of fatalities from flooding and heat waves in the origin county on migration flows is also amplified when the destination county is more urbanized. Thus it appears that even in a developed country like the U.S., extreme weather events continue to exacerbate rural-to-urban migration flows.