Panel data analysis reveals direct and agriculture-mediated climate impacts on migration across 163 countries, highlighting heightened vulnerability in lower-income nations.
Key Points
To examine how climatic variability influences international migration directly and indirectly through agricultural productivity across global economies over time.
Analyzed an international panel dataset of 163 countries spanning 1960 to 2024.
Employed a panel vector autoregression (PVAR) framework to model dynamic responses, endogeneity, and feedback effects among precipitation, temperature, agriculture, and migration.
Evaluated heterogeneity by stratifying the global sample across country income levels.
Precipitation and temperature shocks exert direct, primarily short- to medium-term effects on international migration flows.
Climatic shocks significantly alter agricultural productivity, which serves as a central transmission mechanism driving international migration.
The magnitude of climate-induced migration effects is substantially stronger in low- and middle-income countries relative to high-income economies.