In this paper, we investigate the long-term effects of climate change on the mobility of working-age people. We use a world economy model that covers almost all the countries around the world, and distinguishes between rural and urban regions as well as between flooded and unflooded areas. The model is calibrated to match international and internal mobility data by education level for the last 30 years, and is then simulated under climate change variants. We endogenize the size, dyadic, and skill structure of climate migration. When considering moderate climate scenarios, we predict mobility responses in the range of 70–108 million workers over the course of the twenty-first century. Most of these movements are local or inter-regional. South–South international migration responses are smaller, while the South–North migration response is of the “brain drain” type and induces a permanent increase in the number of foreigners in OECD countries in the range of 6–9% only. Changes in the sea level mainly translate into forced local movements. By contrast, inter-regional and international movements are sensitive to temperature-related changes in productivity. Lastly, we show that relaxing international migration restrictions may exacerbate the poverty effect of climate change at origin if policymakers are unable to select/screen individuals in extreme poverty.

The present paper explores the relationship between agrarian structure and human capital formation between and within Brazil’s federal units. It is argued that whether states’ agriculture is in plantation style, based on cheap coerced labor, or organized around family farming matters for the formulation of educational policies. According to the main claim, landlords were not interested in paying higher taxes to educate the masses and curtailed the expansion of schooling in order to keep a cheap workforce and maintain their monopoly over the decision-making process. Describing several episodes in Brazil’s history of public instruction, the paper stresses the distributional conflicts over education as well as the rural aristocracy’s resistance towards broadly-targeted, citizenship-enhancing educational policies. The descriptive evidence is complemented by statistical analyses employing historical as well as more recent data. It is shown that states characterized by a more egalitarian land distribution, which are not under the dominance of powerful landlords, exhibit better educational coverage and enhanced instruction quality. They also spend more on schooling.