Mahalia B Clark, Ephraim Nkonya, Gillian L Galford
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引用次数: 0
Abstract
With rising global temperatures come greater temperature and precipitation variability, contributing to more frequent and severe climate hazards that can upend lives and displace families. Lower-income households are often disproportionately impacted, so it is important to understand how climate hazards influence human migration patterns across income levels. There has been limited research on climate migration within the United States (US), particularly with respect to its economic impacts, like the associated transfer of household resources and incomes, or "income migration." Here, we investigate spatial and temporal patterns of US domestic migration across income brackets between 2011 and 2021. We then investigate the role of climate hazards in shaping migration and income migration across US counties using panel data for the years 1995-2021. We found that lower-income households moved at higher rates overall but had less net migration across state lines, while higher-income households moved in a more directed fashion towards the most popular migration destinations. We also found an uptick in migration and income migration after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among higher income brackets. Property damage from climate hazards had small but significant relationships with migration. More destructive hurricanes were associated with reduced net migration and income migration nationally and in the South and Northeast. Flood damage was associated with reduced net income migration (greater outflow and/or reduced inflow of aggregate household income from migration) but had minimal effects on net migration overall, suggesting higher-income households (whose moves have a larger impact on net income migration) may be more likely to leave or avoid counties impacted by flooding. This work provides valuable new insights on the roles of both climate hazards and income levels in shaping domestic migration.
Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11111-025-00496-5.
期刊介绍：
Population & Environment is the sole social science journal focused on interdisciplinary research on social demographic aspects of environmental issues. The journal publishes cutting-edge research that contributes new insights on the complex, reciprocal links between human populations and the natural environment in all regions and countries of the world. Quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods contributions are welcome.
Disciplines commonly represented in the journal include demography, geography, sociology, human ecology, environmental economics, public health, anthropology and environmental studies. The journal publishes original research, research brief, and review articles.
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