Climate-Induced Migration and Urban Poverty in Pakistan: Evidence from ARDL Time-Series Analysis

Abstract

In developing countries, climate change has become a major source of internal displacement and socio-economic exposure and has important implications on urban poverty. Pakistan is considered as one of the most climate-vulnerable countries in the world and has encountered frequent floods, temperature rises, and even greater variability of rainfall, which have had devastating effects on rural livelihoods and rural-urban migration. This is an empirical study that investigates the effect of climate caused migration on City poverty in Pakistan between 1990-2025. The time-series data used is annual; the bounds-testing method of Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) is used to derive the estimate of long run relationships, and an Error Correction Model (ECM) is used to represent short run dynamics. The findings verify the existence of stable long run relationship between climate variables, migration induced urbanisation and urban poverty. The mean temperature and precipitation are observed to have positive and significant impacts on urban poverty meaning that climatic stress is a worsening factor to poverty outcomes. These findings are supported by short-run outcomes, and the error correction mechanism suggests that the adjustment to the long-run equilibrium occurs rather fast. The research concludes that climate change is a multiplier of poverty in Pakistan through migration of rural climate shocks into urban deprivation. The results emphasise the need to implement combined measures that can be used to enhance the climate resilience of the rural area, deal with migration, and create inclusive and climate-resilient cities.