Violence and Migration: Evidence from Mexico's Drug War

Sukanya Basu,Sarah Pearlman

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2369411

Abstract

The effect of violence on people's residential choice remains a debated topic in the literature on crime and conflict. We examine the case of the drug war in Mexico, which dramatically increased the number of homicides since late 2006. Using data from the Mexican Census and labor force surveys we estimate the impact of violence on migration at the municipal and state level. To account for the endogeneity of violence we use kilometers of federal highways interacted with cocaine supply shocks from Colombia as an instrument for the annual homicide rate. We argue that highways are good measures of pre-existing drug distribution networks, and the interaction with supply shocks arising in Colombia captures the time-variant nature of the value of these routes. After controlling for observed and unobserved area level heterogeneity, we find little evidence that increases in homicides have led to out migration, at the domestic level. We also find little evidence of international migration at the municipal level, but some evidence of it at the state level. Our results show a muted migration response that is incompatible with a story of wide-scale displacement from the violence.

Highlights

The impact of violence on the affected communities is not well understood and has recently become a topic of significant research in development and labor economics
7 Conclusions In this paper we investigate if the large increase in homicides that took place in Mexico after the start of the drug war led to increased migration, both to other parts of Mexico and abroad
To identify the relationship between violent death and migration rates at the municipal and state level, we instrument for the violence using kilometers of federal highways interacted with shocks to the cocaine supply from Colombia

Summary

Introduction

The impact of violence on the affected communities is not well understood and has recently become a topic of significant research in development and labor economics. For annual international migration rates, correlation between the census and the ENOE is 56.6% Source: Mexican Census, as accessed through IPUMS, and the ENOE previous 10-year period (1995 to 2000), the national migration rate is 5.48% These numbers are lower than comparable countries and highlight that the Mexican population is less mobile than populations used in other studies of relocation responses to violence. This is strongly seen in the state-level rates, which fall from 0.22% in 2005 to 0.09% in 2010 This decline in international migration, to the USA, is thought to be the result of reduced job opportunities in the USA, improved job opportunities in Mexico and increased border enforcement (Passel et al 2012). This suggests there were multiple forces acting to reduce international migration during the drug war period

Estimation strategy

The model

Results

Robustness checks

Conclusions