Migration Responses to Earthquakes: Evidence from Italy

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the migration responses to natural disasters by focusing on the three most devastating earthquakes in Italy in recent decades: L’Aquila 2009, Emilia Romagna 2012, and Central Italy 2016. Using municipality-level data for 2002–2019 and adopting a new difference-in-difference approach with multiple periods and multiple groups, we evaluate the causal effect of these events on internal and international inbound and outbound migration of both Italian and foreign citizens. The results suggest that, despite the massive destruction, there is no evidence that these earthquakes significantly impacted the migration of Italian citizens. We only found evidence of the effect of the earthquake in L’Aquila on the short-distance migration of foreign citizens.

The impact of the L'Aquila earthquake on demographic changes

“…Guzzetti et al, 2005), on social vulnerability (Carnelli & Frigerio, 2016), on community resilience (Fantechi et al, 2020), and on socio-economic local heterogeneity (Pagliacci & Russo, 2019). Studies addressing the social and demographic consequences of L'Aquila earthquake have focused on the impact of the earthquake on the migration system (e.g., Ambrosetti & Petrillo, 2016;Basile et al, 2023;Pesaresi, 2012), on the economic and labour market outcomes of the earthquake (e.g., Cerqua & Di Pietro, 2017;Di Pietro & Mora, 2015), on disaster prevention management (e.g., Alexander, 2012;Alexander, 2019;Mannella et al, 2017). To preview, our research provides empirical evidence of the association between pre-existing vulnerabilities (both demographic and economic) and the demographic trends of a population affected by an earthquake.…”