The effect of climate on migration: United States, 1995–2000

This paper examines the effect of climate on migration. We examine whether climate is an influential factor in internal migration. We assume that most persons tend to avoid exposure to bitter and cold winters, and excessively hot and humid summers, preferring climates between these extremes. When engaging in-migration decision-making, therefore, to the extent possible, considerations involving climate are believed to be brought into the calculus. There is a very limited demographic literature on the effects of climate on migration.In this paper, we undertake an aggregate-based analysis of the effect of climate on migration. We examine this relationship among the 50 states of the United States. We focus attention on the varying effects of climate on three migration measures for the 1995–2000 time period, namely, in-migration, out-migration, and net migration. We next evaluate the effect of climate on migration in the context of a broad application of human ecology. Here climate, a manifestation of the physical environment, is measured with three major independent variables. The other ecological predictors pertaining to organization, population, technology, and the social environment are used as controls. This enables us to examine the effects of climate on migration in the context of competing ecological hypotheses.