Do Socioeconomic Factors Influence Who Is Most Likely to Relocate after Environmental Disasters? A Case Study in Indonesia

Kate Burrows, Ji-Young Son and Michelle L. Bell
Additional contact information
Kate Burrows: School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
Ji-Young Son: School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA
Michelle L. Bell: School of the Environment, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Environmental mobility (residential moves influenced by environmental factors) is increasingly recognized as an important issue, both today and under future conditions of climate change. Those who experience climate- and weather-related disasters rarely respond as a homogenous group of migrants, yet relatively limited studies have specifically examined individual-level heterogeneities across those exposed. In this paper, we used self-reported data to investigate differences in sociodemographics (age, marital status, sex, and education) between those who relocated after environmental disruptions in Indonesia and those who did not relocate. Individuals with 12 years of education at the time of an environmental exposure were 3.93 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.38, 11.20) times more likely to move for environmental reasons than those with <12 years of education. Assuming education as a proxy for socioeconomic status, these findings suggest that those in the mid-range socioeconomic brackets may be most likely to migrate after environmental disruptions, while the poorest are less likely to move. This may reflect that the costs of relocation are prohibitively high for those with lower socioeconomic status. Collectively, these results add to an inconsistent body of literature on environmental mobility and indicate that further site- and context-specific research on climate- and weather-related relocation is needed.

Keywords: migration; displacement; climate change; natural disasters; environmental refugees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/6228/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/11/6228/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:11:p:6228-:d:566820

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().