Keiti Kondi
IRES/LIDAM, UCLouvain
will give a presentation on
Internal Migration as a Response to Soil Degradation: Evidence from Malawi
Abstract :
We study how slow deterioration of soil, caused by climate change, affects internal migration and household resettlement. Rural households are expected to move when they face worsening soil conditions, as soil degradation is detrimental for agricultural productivity. The
other possibility is that they can get stuck in a poverty trap. We use the Integrated Household Survey in Malawi for the years 2010-2016. Soil depletion is not a random process and to account for its endogeneity, we instrument soil degradation by using distant climate shocks and controlling for recent weather conditions. We find that severe soil nutrients constraints push households to send their members away. The underlying mechanism is that soil degradation is harmful for agricultural productivity, and therefore food security, which incentivizes households to seek for better opportunities through pushing their members to migrate.
Co authored with Stefanija Veljanoska