Abstract
Although the relationship between drought – a dimension of climate change – and migration has been explored in a number of settings, prior research has largely focused on out-migration and has not considered climate factors at the migrant destination. However, drought may impact not only out-migration but also return migration, particularly in settings where temporary labor migration and agricultural reliance are common. Thus, considering drought conditions at origins and destinations is necessary to specify the effects of climate on migrant-sending populations. Using detailed data from the Chitwan Valley Family Study, a household panel study in a migrant-sending area in Nepal, we analyze the effect of drought at the neighborhood level on individual-level out-migration and drought at the origin district on return migration among adults from 2011 to 2017, assessing these associations among males and females separately. In mixed-effect discrete-time regressions, we find that neighborhood drought is positively associated with out-migration and return migration, both internally and internationally among males. Among females, drought is positively associated with internal out-migration and return migration, but not international migrations. We did not find an association between drought at the origin and return migration independent of drought status at the destination. Taken together, these findings contribute to our understanding of the complexity of the impacts of precipitation anomalies on population movement over time.
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Availability of data and material
Data for the Chitwan Valley Family Study is available through the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University of Michigan. CHIRPS precipitation data is publicly available at https://www.chc.ucsb.edu/data/chirps.
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Code is available upon request.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank the staff at the Institute for Social and Environmental Research in Nepal and gratefully acknowledge the respondents of the Chitwan Valley Family Study, whose generous contributions make this research possible. Any errors and omissions are the sole responsibility of the authors.
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The authors gratefully acknowledge use of the services and facilities of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, funded by NICHD Center Grant P2CHD041028.
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AE, ET, and NDS conceived of the study. AE led the data analysis with support from ET, NDS, and DG. AE, ET, and NDS drafted the manuscript. All authors contributed to interpretation of the results and edited the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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This analysis is exempt from ethics approval as it utilizes solely de-identified data and therefore does not meet the definition of human subject research.
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Dr. Ghimire is also the Director of the Institute for Social and Environmental Research in Nepal (ISER-N) that collected the data for the research reported here. Dr. Ghimire’s conflict of interest management plan is approved and monitored by the Regents of the University of Michigan.
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Epstein, A., Treleaven, E., Ghimire, D.J. et al. Drought and migration: an analysis of the effects of drought on temporary labor and return migration from a migrant-sending area in Nepal. Popul Environ 44, 145–167 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-022-00406-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11111-022-00406-z