Climate Brain Drain: How natural hazard risk reshapes the geography of high-skilled mobility in the United States

Abstract

Climate change is expected to intensify natural hazards, yet evidence on how these risks affect internal migration remains mixed. In particular, little is known about whether climate-related risk differentially influences the mobility of high-skilled workers, whose location choices play a substantial role in regional economic development. In this study, we construct two directed, weighted mobility flow networks between core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) in the United States: one capturing relocations of high-skilled workers inferred from large-scale résumé data, and another capturing residential migration flows of the general population from Internal Revenue Service records. By comparing these two migration flow networks, we find that high-skilled mobility is substantially less constrained by physical distance and exhibits a more hierarchical core-periphery structure than general migration. Statistical analysis and causal inference further reveal that, while high-skilled mobility is driven primarily by economic opportunity and the natural amenity offerings of the destination region, exposure to natural hazard risk reduces the attractiveness of urban areas to high-skilled workers more strongly than it does for the general population. These findings suggest that climate change can reinforce existing inequalities by selectively diverting high-skilled workers away from vulnerable regions, with important implications for regional economic growth and resilience under increasing climate risk.

Under Review.