Valerie Mueller

Natural disasters and population mobility in Bangladesh

The consequences of environmental change for human migration have gained increasing attention in the context of climate change and recent large-scale natural disasters, but as yet relatively few large-scale and quantitative studies have addressed this issue. We investigate the consequences of climate-related natural disasters for long-term population mobility in rural Bangladesh, a region particularly vulnerable to environmental change, using longitudinal survey data from 1,700 households spanning a 15-y period. Multivariate event history models are used to estimate the effects of flooding and crop failures on local population mobility and long-distance migration while controlling for a large set of potential confounders at various scales. The results indicate that flooding has modest effects on mobility that are most visible at moderate intensities and for women and the poor. However, crop failures unrelated to flooding have strong effects on mobility in which households that are not directly affected but live in severely affected areas are the most likely to move. These results point toward an alternate paradigm of disaster-induced mobility that recognizes the significant barriers to migration for vulnerable households as well their substantial local adaptive capacity.

Heat stress increases long-term human migration in rural Pakistan

Human migration attributable to climate events has recently received significant attention from the academic and policy communities (1-2). Quantitative evidence on the relationship between individual, permanent migration and natural disasters is limited (3-9). A 21-year longitudinal survey conducted in rural Pakistan (1991-2012) provides a unique opportunity to understand the relationship between weather and long-term migration. We link individual-level information from this survey to satellite-derived measures of climate variability and control for potential confounders using a multivariate approach. We find that flooding—a climate shock associated with large relief efforts—has modest to insignificant impacts on migration. Heat stress, however—which has attracted relatively little relief—consistently increases the long-term migration of men, driven by a negative effect on farm and non-farm income. Addressing weather-related displacement will require policies that both enhance resilience to climate shocks and lower barriers to welfare-enhancing population movements.

Migratory Responses to Agricultural Risk in Northern Nigeria

We investigate the extent in which northern Nigerian households engage in internal migration to insure against ex ante and ex post agricultural risk due to weather-related variability and shocks. We use data on the migration patterns of individuals over a 20-year period and temperature degree-days to identify agricultural risk. Controlling for ex ante and ex post risk, we find that households with higher ex ante risk are more likely to send migrants. Households facing hot shocks before the migrant’s move tend to keep their male migrants in closer proximity. These findings suggest that households use migration as a risk management strategy in response to both ex ante and ex post risk, but that migration responses are gender-specific. These findings have implications not only for understanding the insurance motives of households, but also potential policy responses tied to climatic warming.

Long-term Impacts of Droughts on Labour Markets in Developing Countries: Evidence from Brazil

Abstract Climate shocks have well-documented impacts on the short-term welfare of rural households in developing countries. We investigate the impact of droughts on Brazilian labour markets. We find long-term rural wage losses beyond the immediate impact of the drought, with affected workers taking five years to catch up with their peers. Findings are robust to model specification. The severity of the losses varies with the dependence on agricultural income, supporting the notion of diversifying portfolio strategies in rural areas to reduce climate-related income risk.

Environmental Migration and Labor Markets in Nepal

While an emerging literature cites weather shocks as migration determinants, scant evidence exists on how such migration affects the markets of receiving communities in developing countries. We address this knowledge gap by investigating the impact of weather-driven internal migration on labor markets in Nepal. An increase of 1 percentage point in net migration reduces wages in the formal sector by 5.7%. A similar change in migration augments unemployment by 1 percentage point. The unskilled bear greater consequences. Understanding entrepreneurial constraints and drivers of labor market exits will inform pathways to resilience.

How Resilient are Labour Markets to Natural Disasters? The Case of the 1998 Bangladesh Flood

Abstract Natural disasters devastate economies as they impede capital accumulation. The resilience of labour markets is crucial for the poor who rely on labour to reduce risk. We evaluate how the 1998 ‘flood of the century’ affected wages in Bangladesh. We find short-term declines in agricultural and non-agricultural wages. Agricultural workers who moved towards non-agricultural employment to cope benefitted through a lower percentage reduction in short-term wages. Endowed with human capital, salaried workers were unable to mitigate income risk. Extending the eligibility of credit access or relief programmes may preserve local businesses and their employees in the years following a flood.

Rising wages in Bangladesh

Using data from multiple sources, we show that in Bangladesh, the increase in real wages, particularly female wages, has accelerated since the late 2000s, suggesting that the Lewis turning point (the point at which the labor market starts to shift in favor of workers) has arrived in Bangladesh. Rising wages are likely a result of a combination of more ample job opportunities in the nonfarm sector, especially in the manufacturing sector for females, and a greater amount of remittances, primarily from male workers overseas. Since human capital is the most important asset for the poor, the escalation in real wages has boosted the poor’s earnings, thereby reducing their likelihood of being poor.

Filling the Legal Void? Experimental Evidence from a Community-Based Legal Aid Program for Gender-Equal Land Rights in Tanzania

Gender disparities continue to exist in women’s control, inheritance, and ownership of land in spite of legislation directing improvements in women’s land access. Women are often excluded from traditional patrilineal inheritance systems, often lack the legal know-how or enforcement mechanisms to ensure their property rights are maintained, and often lack initial capital or asset bases to purchase land through market mechanisms. Community-based legal aid programs have been promoted as one way to expand access to justice for marginalized populations, through provision of free legal aid and education. Despite promising programmatic experiences, few rigorous evaluations have studied their impacts in developing countries. We evaluate the effect of a one-year community-based legal aid program in the Kagera Region of northwestern Tanzania using a randomized controlled trial design with specific attention to gender. We measure impacts of access to legal aid on a range of land-related knowledge, attitude, and practice outcomes using individual questionnaires administered to male and female household members separately. Effects were limited in the short term to settings with minimal transaction costs to the paralegal. Treatment women in smaller villages attend legal seminars and are more knowledgeable and positive regarding their legal access to land. Cost-effectiveness analysis shows that the costs of bringing about these changes are moderate. The difference between the impact of the intervention on men and on women is narrowed when taking into account the gender-differentiated paralegal effort, and thus costs, allocated to women and men.

Resettlement for Food Security's Sake: Insights from a Malawi Land Reform Project

In several African contexts, households are unable to enhance agricultural production due to land constraints. Few governments have explored the use of resettlement to alleviate land scarcity and facilitate rural-to-rural migration. We examine whether a resettlement project in southern Malawi improved food security in the long term. Our findings indicate resettled households achieved greater long-term food security, owing to additional land coupled with a more diversified crop portfolio. We also find the formalization of property rights improved land security for male and female household heads, but resettlement jeopardized the land security of women in maleheaded households. (JEL Q15, Q18)

Temporary and permanent migrant selection: Theory and evidence of ability-search cost dynamics

The migrant selection literature concentrates primarily on spatial patterns. This paper illustrates the implications of migration duration for patterns of selection by integrating two workhorses of the labor literature, a search model and a Roy model. Theory and empirics show temporary migrants are intermediately selected on education, with weaker selection on cognitive ability. Longer migration episodes lead to stronger positive selection on both education and ability, as its associated jobs involve finer employee-employer matching and offer greater returns to experience. Networks are more valuable for permanent migration, where search costs are higher. Labor market frictions explain observed complex network-skill interactions.