Title:  Natural hazards and internal migration in Bangladesh:  The role of transient versus permanent shocks.

Abstract:  We examined whether floods and cyclones, which can be considered as transient shocks, affect inter-regional migration differently compared to riverbank erosion that causes loss of lands and thus generates shocks that are permanent in nature. For our investigation, we tracked the 2000 Household Income and Expenditure Survey participants in nine coastal districts in Bangladesh and collected further information in 2015. We model migration on natural disasters and a range of household level variables. Our findings suggest that both transient and permanent shocks induce households to move to nearby cities but the effect is much higher for the latter category. Comparing income and expenditure of migrant- and non-migrant households in a matched difference-in-differences setting, we find that the former group is better-off relative to their counterparts, indicating that welfare can be improved by facilitating migration. Rising exposure to climate change induced natural disasters around the world imply that our findings will be increasingly relevant for designing policies to address vulnerability in disaster-prone countries with weak social safety nets.