Abstract
We introduce the consideration of human migration into research on economic losses from extreme weather disasters. Taking a comparative case study approach and using data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York/Equifax Consumer Credit Panel, we document the size of economic losses attributable to migration from 23 disaster-affected areas in the United States before, during, and after some of the most costly hurricanes, tornadoes, and wildfires on record. We then employ demographic stan-dardization and decomposition to determine if these losses primarily reflect changes in out-migra tion or the eco nomic resources that migrants take with them. Finally, we con sider the impli ca tions of these losses for chang ing spa tial inequal ity in the United States. While disas ter-affected areas and their pop u la tions differ in their experiences of and responses to extreme weather disasters, we generally find that, relative to the year before an extreme weather disaster, economic losses via migration from disaster-affected areas increase the year of and after the disaster, these changes primarily reflect changes in out-migration (vs. the economic resources that migrants take with them), and these losses briefly disrupt the status quo by temporarily reducing spatial inequality.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 173-199 |
Number of pages | 27 |
Journal | Demography |
Volume | 60 |
Issue number | 1 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Feb 1 2023 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:Acknowledgments This work is part of the projects “Extreme Weather Disasters, Economic Losses via Migration, and Widening Spatial Inequality” and “Analysis of Impacts of Environmental and Natural Hazards on Human Migration,”funded by the National Science Foundation (awards 1850871 and 2117405, respectively), and the project “Demographic Responses to Natural Resource Changes,” funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) at the National Institutes of Health (award 5R03HD095014-02). This work is also supported by center grant P2C HD041023 awarded to the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota, center grant P2C HD041020 awarded to the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University, and center grant P2C HD047873 awarded to the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison by the NICHD.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors.
Keywords
- Climate
- Disaster
- Losses
- Migration
- Vector