Weather and Migration in India: Evidence from NSS Data

While a wide range of factors influence rural-rural and rural-urban migration in developing countries, there is significant interest in analyzing the role of agricultural distress and growing inter-regional differences in fuelling such movement. This strand of research acquires importance in the context of climate change adaptation. In the Indian context this analysis gets further complicated due to significant presence of temporary migration. Acknowledging that both temporary and permanent migration in India could be influenced among other things by the weather and its variability, this paper analyses the same using National Sample Survey data for the year 2007-08. The results based on rural Indian migration data suggest that weather has significant role in explaining temporary migration and relatively lesser influence on permanent migration. The study further highlights that both temperature and rainfall are important determinants of temporary migration while the permanent migration is broadly influenced by temperature alone.