Global Assessment of Rural-Urban Migrants Consistent with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

LEIWEN JIANG , Shanghai University and Population Council

Urbanization and migration are among the demographic megatrends that profoundly influence socioeconomic and environmental conditions of human societies. Urbanization projections are included for the first time as core element in the IPCC new socioeconomic scenarios – the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and have been widely adopted in climate and environmental change research. However, rural-urban migration is not explicitly accounted in the SSP Scenarios. Studies shows that migrants in the cities are more vulnerable to environmental risks and climate extremes; migrants and cities are considered the key themes of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, to ensure sustainable urbanization and improve well-being of the migrants. Using Multiregional Population and Urbanization Projection Model, this paper assesses the plausible range of rural-urban migrants for all global regions consistent with the SSP urbanization scenarios and population projections. Results reveal that there are globally 40-80 million migrants annually under different urbanization scenarios, converging to 50 million by the middle of the century. The numbers vary substantially across regions but are mostly concentrated in Africa and Asia. The next decades are the critical period of large flows of migrants, representing the major challenges for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

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 Presented in Session 51. Recent trends of internal migration