Migration and Climate Change in Rural Africa

Cristina Cattaneo and Emanuele Massetti

No 202117, Climate Change and Sustainable Development from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM)

Abstract: We analyse whether migration is an adaptation that households employ to cope with climate in Ghana and Nigeria. If migration is part of the present adaptation portfolio of households in developing countries, it is reasonable to expect that it will also be an adaptation to future climate change. It is important to stress that we are interested in long-term climatic conditions rather than in short-term weather fluctuations. The data to test these predictions are drawn from two different household surveys: the Nigeria General Household Survey and the Ghana Living Standard Survey. We find a hill-shaped relationship between temperature in the dry sea son and the propensity to migrate in households that operate farms. We also find a significant hill-shaped relationship between precipitations in the wet seasons and the propensity to migrate in farm households. Climate has instead no significant impact on the propensity to migrate in non-farm households. Climate change scenarios generated by General Circulation model reveal that, ceteris paribus, migration may decline in Ghana and in Nigeria.

Keywords: Environmental; Economics; and; Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40
Date: 2015-04-20
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/202117/files/NDL2015-029.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Migration and Climate Change in Rural Africa (2015)
Working Paper: Migration and Climate Change in Rural Africa (2015)
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:ags:feemcl:202117

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.202117

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Climate Change and Sustainable Development from Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().