Climate Change, Crop Yields, and Internal Migration in the United States

Shuaizhang Feng, Michael Oppenheimer and Wolfram Schlenker

No 17734, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We investigate the link between agricultural productivity and net migration in the United States using a county-level panel for the most recent period of 1970-2009. In rural counties of the Corn Belt, we find a statistically significant relationship between changes in net outmigration and climate-driven changes in crop yields, with an estimated semi-elasticity of about -0.17, i.e., a 1% decrease in yields leads to a 0.17% net reduction of the population through migration. This effect is primarily driven by young adults. We do not detect a response for senior citizens, nor for the general population in eastern counties outside the Corn Belt. Applying this semi-elasticity to predicted yield changes under the B2 scenario of the Hadley III model, we project that, holding other factors constant, climate change would on average induce 3.7% of the adult population (ages 15-59) to leave rural counties of the Corn Belt in the medium term (2020-2049) compared to the 1960-1989 baseline, with the possibility of a much larger migration response in the long term (2077-2099). Since there is uncertainty about future warming, we also present projections for a range of uniform climate change scenarios in temperature or precipitation.

JEL-codes: N3 N5 Q1 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-mig
Note: EEE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (66)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17734.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17734

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17734

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by (wpc@nber.org).