No Place to Hide: The Impact of Climate Change on Internal Migration Across Six Sub-Saharan Countries

Abstract: Drawing from 17 rounds of harmonised census data, this paper explores the link between climate variability and internal migration across six Sub-Saharan African countries. This study uses high-resolution precipitation and temperature data to construct two sets of measures capturing climate variability, the intensity of climate anomalies and the exposure to climate extremes. Two complementary hypotheses are tested: (1) whether climate variability increases the likelihood to migrate across provinces, and (2) if this effect is more pronounced for urban-bound migration. Overall, our analysis yields mixed conclusions. First, our results indicate that prolonged exposure to climate extremes such as droughts and cold snaps discourages migration across provinces. Second, most of the climate measures decrease the odds of urban-bound migration, therefore suggesting the existence of an immobilising effect through which climate change lowers the resources needed to finance the cost of migrating. Notwithstanding the limitations of this study, this research provides the first evidence of the climate inhibitor mechanism of internal migration across a large geographical area of relatively poor Sub-Saharan countries.