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Tuesday, February 8th 2022

Mélanie Gittard (PSE) will present "Climate variability, migration and population in Kenya"

Abstract:

Over the past decades, East Africa has faced repetitive climate extremes and changes in precipitation trends, driving modification of demographic patterns. This paper studies the effects of past climate variability on internal migration in Kenya. It contributes to the micro-oriented literature on climate-induced migration by decompressing history, using long term, local, precise and representative data. We match, over twenty years, population data at the sub-location level, from three exhaustive administrative censuses (1989, 1999, and 2009), with high spatial and temporal resolution precipitation and temperature data sets from the Climate Hazard Center (CHIRPS/CHIRTS-ERA). It is also a methodological contribution, advocating for the use of relevant climatic indicators (and data) and local demographic effects in order to understand the impacts of climate variability on internal migration. Particular attention is devoted to the definition and analysis of climate variability and changes in precipitation trends over the country. The main empirical strategy uses a two-way fixed effect model, exploiting the temporal and spatial variation of dry events that occurred in Kenya during 1999-1989 and 2009-1999. The goal is to understand the incidence of climate variability on migration behaviors at the sublocation level, and to investigate the heterogeneity of the demographic movements. The main contribution of this paper is a demographic record of migration, giving the demographic decomposition of the migration according to gender, economic activity, age brackets and educational level. Overall Kenya, the results suggest that an additional dry rainy season over the decades implies a decrease of -2 percentage points (p.p) of the decadal population growth rate. The fuzzy design shows that results are mainly borne by rural sub localities where pastoralism is the main sector of activity, and a Sharp Difference-in-Difference identifies the effect in the West-Center of the country. The demographic record suggests that the migration is balanced in terms of gender (48 % female), and mainly driven by individuals in their working age (no effects on inactive population and infantile mortality). Climate migrants have attended at least primary education, while the population from the low end of the skill distribution signicantly stays in affected areas (in line with a poverty trap story). The results according to the economic activity show different results between rural and urban areas. It suggests an out-migration of the working population involved in agricultural activity in rural areas, while it suggests a change in the labor allocation in urban areas as business owners seem to fall into unemployment when exposed to climate variability.