Cash transfers relax climate-induced mobility constraints in Kenya

The use of migration as an adaptation strategy is now recognized by scholars and policymakers as a key response to climate change. Cash transfer programs, now being implemented worldwide, also have the potential to facilitate adaptation and promote resilience in low- and middle-income countries. We investigate the extent to which a cash transfer program in Kenya promoted the mobility of household members due to climate shocks, leveraging exogenous variation in local deviations from the historical climate and the administration of the program through a randomized controlled trial. Our findings indicate that beneficiary households were less likely to reduce migration amid cold spells, likely via shifts in education-related migration. We also find that heat spells ubiquitously encourage new members to join the household, while cold spells have the opposite effect, and that cash transfers do not appear to alter these relationships. Together the results suggest that cold spells can trap migrants in temperate, low-resource settings and that cash transfers can partially alleviate these constraints. Modeling migration and complementary strategies in the presence of climate tipping points will become necessary to predict when more permanent migration will be triggered and modifying social assistance will become necessary.