Climate variability and migration in Bihar: An empirical analysis

Abstract

The increased frequency and severity of natural hazards threaten rural livelihoods and accentuate rural to urban migration in developing countries. In this paper, we study the relationship between climate variability, hazards and migration in the context of Bihar, a state in India, experiencing floods every year affecting lives, livelihoods and loss and damage to public infrastructures. The extant literature shows that communities exposed to repeated disasters resort to migration as an adaptation strategy. An enquiry into the reasons behind migration have been a continuous process but the complex inter-connections between economic, geographic, socio-politico and environmental or even the human psychological factors, make such an enquiry complicated. The study consider 29 districts in the state and use data from three Census rounds (1991, 2001 and 2011) to empirically analyse the relationship. The theoretical foundations of the New Economics of Labour Migration (NELM, 1985) provides the basis for the empirical analysis. We use the 2SLS approach for analysing this relationship. The results show that higher flood intensity may increase migration outflow. Further, temperature variability and rainfall variability statistically affect the flood intensity index but the impact of the latter is found to be weaker. NELM is partially validated by the findings from this study and therefore, contrary to general perception that relative deprivation and growth prospects are the only factor behind mobility, we find climatic variability too play an important role.