Does a hotter year send people abroad, and does it matter whether they have relatives already there?
Extreme Temperatures and International Migration: Evidence from El Salvador
Ana María Ibáñez et al. (2026) · Journal of Development Economics
Replication data ↗ (openICPSR)
The archive requires an account we do not hold, so the files were not opened. What follows rests on the published abstract and on this platform's own observations.
What the authors found
Ibáñez, Quigua, Romero and Velásquez show that exposure to extreme temperatures raises international migration from El Salvador. The chain is specific: heat cuts corn yields, producers respond by using fewer post-harvest inputs and hiring fewer agricultural workers, and the resulting income losses push people to leave — but mainly where established US migration networks make leaving affordable. Migration works as adaptation only when somebody is already at the other end.
What our data adds
El Salvador is among the most remittance-dependent economies in the world, receiving 27.5 per cent of GDP, behind only Tajikistan at 57.7 and Honduras at 30.1. Honduras and El Salvador sitting side by side at the top of that table, both with long-established corridors to the United States, is the network condition the paper identifies stated as a national statistic. The same climate shock in a country without that corridor would, on this account, produce hardship rather than departure.
| Figure | Value | Indicator |
|---|---|---|
| El Salvador, remittances as a share of GDP | 27.5% | BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS |
| Honduras | 30.1% | BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS |
| Tajikistan | 57.7% | BX.TRF.PWKR.DT.GD.ZS |
Every figure here is computed from observations in this database and can be charted, downloaded or queried.
What this cannot show
Remittance dependence is a consequence of past migration, so using it as evidence about the network's role risks circularity — the paper identifies from year-to-year temperature variation within El Salvador, which is a different kind of claim entirely. This database holds no temperature, crop yield or agricultural employment data, so the mechanism between heat and departure is entirely outside it. Recording the climate-migration link as an unfilled gap is the accurate summary.