Asylum applications respond to temperature fluctuations

Abstract

Warming stresses developing countries Weather-induced conflicts in developing countries spill over to developed countries through asylum applications. One approach to estimating the future impacts of climate change is to look at the effects of weather fluctuations. These transient shocks can be interpreted analytically as randomly distributed treatments applied to countries around the world. Missirian and Schlenker analyzed the relation between these localized shocks to agriculture and applications by that country's migrants for asylum in the European Union. When temperatures in the source country deviated from a moderate optimum around 20°C that is best for agriculture, asylum applications increased. Thus, the net forecast is for asylum applications to increase as global temperatures rise. Science , this issue p. 1610