Migrant Selection and Sorting During the Great American Drought

America's worst drought stretched the 1930s, but we know little about the influence of the drought itself compared to the associated soil erosion and dust storms. This paper studies heterogeneity in the migration response to drought by relating migration decisions recorded in the 1940 census to county drought conditions. Drought increased migration primarily for individuals with a 12th grade education or higher because this segment of the population was less often financially constrained. Drought migrants left rural and city locations at similar rates and were less likely to relocate to cities compared to similar non-drought migrants. These findings highlight the importance of human capital for individual-level adaptation to climate shocks, challenge the perception that rural-to-urban is the dominant environmental-migrant channel, and document the centrality of drought for internal migration during the 1930s