Do Natural Disasters Really Lead to Forced Migration? Evidence from Indonesia

Abstract

The paper examines the claim of forced migration due to increasing environmental calamities by studying how natural disasters shape household moving pattern in Indonesia. As household migration takes various forms, I separate it into two different types which are (1) split migration and (2) moving of the entire household. Contrary to our intuitive understanding, the study shows that more disasters actually drive down the two types of out-migration in ex-post. The paper goes on to explain the findings and discovers that earthquakes reduce household size, total earnings and non-business assets. Because households with smaller size, less total earnings and lower non-business assets are less likely to split, earthquakes reduce split migration by decreasing the values of those economic variables. On the other hand, eruptions drive up farm business assets and consequently lead to less moving of the entire household since greater holdings of farm business assets makes households less mobile to move out as a whole. Though earthquakes and eruptions reduce split migration, the trend of rising disaster occurrence in fact causes households to split more. Yet, the split-off households stay in the same village rather than going far off from their places of origin.

Keywords: Indonesia, natural disasters, forced migration

JEL Classification: O15, Q54