Social Policy and Resilience: A Geospatial Analysis of the Impact of Climate Change on Migration Decisions Among Vulnerable Agricultural Producers

Author: Vinícius Schuabb, Sergio Guimarães, Paulo Tafner and Valdemar Pinho Neto

Edition: 1st

Published in: March 2025

This research analyzes how social policies influence the coping strategies of vulnerable agricultural households affected by climate change. We investigate the interplay between income shocks caused by extreme droughts and the benefits of the Brazilian Bolsa Família Program, focusing on how these factors influence the migration decisions of highly exposed individuals.

Moving beyond traditional models that observe extreme weather events and migration patterns among administrative divisions, we develop a novel methodology to analyze migration both within and between Brazilian municipalities. We use high-resolution historical precipitation data at small grid units (0,05° por 0,05°) and geographical coordinates of households’ addresses registered in the CadÚnico (registry for social programs) and the Declaration of Aptitude (DAP) for the National Program for the Strengthening of Family Agriculture (Pronaf) systems.

Our findings reveal that short-distance migrations, within municipalities of origin, are five times more prevalent than long-distance ones, between municipalities. We estimate a panel with millions of vulnerable agricultural producers from 2015 to 2020. We find that social benefits can both favor or reduce the likelihood of individual migration depending on their level of exposure to droughts. Individuals exposed to the 1% most severe historical drought use the social benefits, on average, to increase migration; whereas those exposed to the 10% instance of drought use the social benefit as a resilience strategy, dampening migration. This effect is particularly pronounced among the benefit holders and heterogeneous to individual characteristics. On the other hand, the buffer mechanism of social programs tends to keep vulnerable individuals in places of poorer socioeconomic infrastructure compared to their migrating counterparts.

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