This paper investigates the long-term effects of climate change on global migration and inequality, having the authors modeled the impact of climate change on productivity and utility in a dynamic general equilibrium framework.
By endogenizing migration decisions across millions of spatial cells, the study captures the scale and structure of climate-induced migration across regions and education groups.
Study findings show that climate change intensifies global inequality and poverty, reinforces urbanization, and increases migration from low- to high-latitude areas. Median projections suggest that global warming could lead to the voluntary and forced permanent relocation of around 62 million working-age individuals during the 21st century.
Overall, it is concluded that under current international migration policies, only a small share of those affected are able to move beyond their home countries, and that while massive international migration is unlikely under most scenarios, climate-driven poverty poses a major global threat.
Learn more about this study here: https://doi.org/10.1093/jeea/jvab054
Reference
Michał Burzyński, Christoph Deuster, Frédéric Docquier, Jaime de Melo, Climate Change, Inequality, and Human Migration, Journal of the European Economic Association, Volume 20, Issue 3, June 2022, Pages 1145–1197