Climate, Migration, Gender

The proposed project uses a gendered lens to explore the effects of climate variability on migration patterns and flows. Though much research has attempted to predict climate-migration, and there is strong evidence that gender inequality shapes adaptive capacity and vulnerability, few demographic and statistical studies have explicitly considered the role of gender in climatemigration. Our research focuses on the Asian region, which is home to 60% of the world’s population, exhibits high gender inequality, and is predicted to be heavily impacted by global climate change. The project breaks new ground by bringing together four socio-demographic and three environmental secondary data sources, allowing for gender-migration-climate modeling across several Asian nations. We will analyze large-sample, longitudinal survey data for China (China Health and Nutrition Survey), India (India Human Development Survey), Bangladesh (Matlab Health and Socioeconomic Survey), and Indonesia (Indonesia Family Life Survey)—in combination with high-resolution gridded climate data. Using these data, we will estimate a set of multivariate regression models to examine how gender mediates climate-induced migration, how these relationships interact with other sociodemographic characteristics, and how these relationships may be shaped by gender norms. These analyses will illuminate gendered differences in climate-induced migration patterns and flows; how wealth, household size, and other demographic characteristics interact with gendered climate-migration; and how much of an impact gender norms have on these processes. Understanding both the effect of gender on climate-migration, as well as the drivers of this effect, has the potential to greatly improve implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation policies.