Monetary transfers are related to patterning in climate events, not just single extreme events

It is well-documented that households respond to climate events with climate adaptations, risk-management strategies like livelihood diversification, migration, or remittances – sending money and goods across distances. However, the focus is largely on responses to single climate events, while suggestive evidence indicates that temporal and spatial patterns across multiple events – including event frequency, clustering, and spatial extent – may predict which climate adaptations households use. Here, we assess whether households that have experienced not just more severe droughts, but more frequent, temporally autocorrelated, or spatially extensive droughts across recent years, are more likely to have received a remittance over the last 12 months. We analyze remittance data from 2009 from 11,776 households across six sub-Saharan African countries, matching it to satellite and weather station data on precipitation and evapotranspiration (1981-2009). We find that in the majority of countries, average severity of drought over a five-year window is associated with receiving a remittance; these effects are largely driven by remittances from household migrants, especially those who moved more than five years ago. Spatial extent is associated with receiving remittances in Nigeria but is slightly or significantly negative in other countries, while results for frequency vary by country. In short, patterning may predict what adaptations households will use in the face of climate events like drought, with strategies potentially varying by country. We suggest that researchers should investigate not just single events, but patterning across events. Doing so could help us better anticipate and support adaptations like remittances given future climate projections.