Weather Shocks, Agricultural Production and Migration: Evidence from Tanzania

We analyse whether Tanzanian rural households engage in internal migration as a response to weather-related shocks. We hypothesise that, when exposed to such shocks and a consecutive crop yield reduction, rural households use migration as a risk management strategy. Our findings confirm that for an average household, a 1 per cent reduction in agricultural income induced by weather shock increases the probability of migration by 13 percentage points on average within the following year. However, this effect is significant only for households in the middle of wealth distribution, suggesting that the choice of migration as an adaptation strategy depends on initial endowment. What is more, the proposed mechanism applies to households whose income is highly dependent on agriculture, but is not important for diversified livelihoods.