Conference Agenda

There is mixed evidence on whether individuals adapt to extreme climate events by relocating away from vulnerable areas. Using comprehensive French individual-level administrative data, we examine heterogeneous migration responses to flooding. We find substantial post-flood migration, with pronounced heterogeneity: private renters are significantly more likely to move than homeowners or social housing tenants, and migration responses are weaker among individuals in the bottom and top income quintiles relative to those in the middle.

Exploring potential mechanisms, we find no significant effects on individual income or local housing prices. Instead, we observe an increase in housing transactions outside flood-prone areas, consistent with flooding operating as a disamenity or triggering an updating of perceived flood risk. At the municipality level, we find no average treatment effect on population inflows or outflows, highlighting the importance of granular, micro-level data. Nevertheless, flooding alters the composition of population flows: outflows from flooded municipalities contain a lower share of individuals from the bottom quartile of the national income distribution, pointing to distributional consequences of flood-induced mobility.