Abstract
Subsistence farmers in Sahelian Africa are highly vulnerable to the rainfall effects associated with climate change. Permanent or temporary out-migration can provide an individual or family the opportunity to mitigate against these effects. One major challenge to quantifying the impact of climate change on out-migration is lack of appropriate spatial and temporal data. Out-migration data must be adequately detailed to include both long- and short-term departures. The climate data must provide fine scale, community-specific detail. To examine the climate variability as a factor of out-migration we examine individual- and community-level responses using highly detailed, full migration histories of 3150 individuals with fine-scale rainfall data. Using this multi-method approach we examine the probability of out-migration as well as out-migration duration and destination as they relate to locally measured rainfall. The results suggest that out-migration behavior does not generally change because of reductions or variation in the rainy season.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 187-196 |
Number of pages | 10 |
Journal | World Development |
Volume | 109 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Sep 2018 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This research has been supported by USGS grant # G14AC00042 and NASA # NNX13AC67G . Additional financial support from INED and the Minnesota Population Center was also instrumental. Jack DeWaard and Clark Gray provided helpful feedback on earlier versions of this research. We also appreciate the SLAM team’s efforts and the countless hours the Malian community members have spent sharing their lives and experiences with us.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier Ltd
Keywords
- Food security
- Mali
- Out-migration
- Rainfall