How Does Climate Change Affect Rural Jobs in West Africa? : Evidence on Rural Labor Reallocation and Household Labor Productivity

Overview & Synopsis

Rural households face compounding pressures from slow-onset temperature rise and acute weather shocks, yet the labor market consequences of these pressures remain poorly understood. This paper provides evidence on how rural workers in West Africa adjust their labor supply along both the intensive margin (hours and days worked, holding a second job) and the extensive margin (within- and across-sector reallocation and diversification) in response to climate change, and how household labor productivity is affected through this labor supply channel as well as through the direct impact of climate change on agricultural production. Drawing on harmonized georeferenced household surveys from seven West African countries matched with high-resolution climate data, the analysis documents consistent and robust patterns linking climate exposure to labor market outcomes. Differentiating between different crop and non-crop farming activities and non-agricultural employment, we find causal evidence that exposure to global warming and extreme weather events induces rural workers to adjust their labor supply by opting into different sectors – especially into non-agriculture – and by altering their labor effort across different farming and non-farm activities. Women and men exhibit different patterns: women increasingly move into non-agriculture employment in response to slow-onset warming, but when exposed to extreme heat or drought, they devote more hours to non-cereal agriculture whereas men increase their hours in off-farm work. When individuals’ labor reallocation is aggregated to the household level, we see no change in total household hours worked and minimal effects on household labor productivity, based on cross-sectional evidence. Although households demonstrate resilience by adjusting within-household labor allocation sufficiently to offset climate change-induced production losses in the year of observation, questions remain about the future adaptive capacity of rural households as they face more extreme global warming and climate shocks.