Long-term migration trends and rising temperatures: the role of irrigation

Climate variability has the potential to affect both international and internal migration profoundly. Earlier work finds that higher temperatures reduce agricultural yields, which in turn reduces rates low-income countries, due liquidity constraints. We test whether access irrigation modulates this temperature–migration relationship, since buffers incomes from high temperatures. regress measures of on decadal averages temperature rainfall, interacted with country-level data income. find robust evidence that, for poor significantly offsets negative effect increasing migration, as proxied by urbanisation rates. Our results demonstrate importance considering alternative adaptation strategies when analysing temperature-migration relationship.