Young scholars’ webinars: “Homeward Bound: How Migrants Seek Out Familiar Climates”

This paper examines the relationship between climate similarity and migration and documents new evidence of climate matching across time, geography, and migrant groups. First, using historical Censuses, it show that European immigrants during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1920) selected destinations in the US with similar climates to their home country. Second, it links US and Norwegian Censuses and documents the existence of climate matching within countries. That is, immigrants from colder and wetter parts of Norway settled in colder and wetter parts of the US. Third, it finds that climate similarity predicts internal migration within the US, both historically (1850-1940) and today (2011-2019). It provides evidence that at least two complementary mechanisms can explain these patterns: climate-specific human capital and climate as an amenity. Then, it exploited spatial and temporal variation generated by the 1862 Homestead Act, which offered free land to settlers, to estimate the marginal value of climate. It concludes by discussing the implications of the growing literature on climate change and migration.