The Effect of Disasters on Migration Destinations: Evidence from Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

While post-disaster migration can move vulnerable populations from dangerous regions to relatively safe ones, little is known about decisions that migrants use to select new homes. We develop an econometric model of migrant flows to examine the characteristics of the destinations that attracted migrants leaving the New Orleans area following Hurricane Katrina in 2005 relative to migration behaviors in other years. We find an increased flow of migrants to large, nearby counties with a mixed effect of economic variables on migration. We find that counties that had experienced fewer disasters received a greater proportion of total migrants in 2005, but there was an overall increase in migration flow to disaster-prone regions as well.

Income-based Inequality in Post-disaster Migration is Lower in High Resilience Areas: Evidence from U.S. Internal Migration

“…As the figure shows, our model estimates poorer counties to experience decreased inmigration after natural disasters while richer counties are expected to see increased inmigration given disaster-related property damages. These results echo prior work that find natural disasters to have a pull on inmigration both in the U.S. (Eyer et al 2018) and abroad (Naik, Stigter and Laczko 2007). This phenomenon occurs for a host of reasons, including increased demand for labor to rebuild the afflicted areas or because individuals from disaster-afflicted regions will congregate to economically-developed locales within the region.…”

“…This data source has been used in prior studies of U.S. internal migration (e.g. Eyer et al 2018;Liu, Andris and Desmarais 2019). While the data set provides both the number of individuals and households that moved, we focus on households migration because climate events affect households as a whole rather than at the individual level.…”

“…In addition to studying outmigration patterns, our understanding of relocation as a climate change adaptation measure also benefits from considering how climate factors impact where people move to. Not only is this relevant to assessing how effective the net effect of relocation is (Eyer et al 2018), migration is generally important in itself because it drives social reorganization (Liu, Andris and Desmarais 2019;Feng, Oppenheimer and Schlenker 2012). Our county-to-county migration flow data allows us to look at these inmigration patterns.…”

“…Because there is considerable geographical consistency in climate patterns, those faced with the threat of climate change, such as natural disasters or other extreme weather events, can in principle choose to relocate their residences out of concern for their personal and economic welfare. Prior work shows, for example, that internal migration patterns in the U.S. vary by climate-related crop yields (Feng, Oppenheimer and Schlenker 2012) and exposure to natural disasters (Boustan et al 2020;Eyer et al 2018).…”

Promoting equity in retreat through voluntary property buyout programs

“…However, post-disaster migration has also included large-scale out-of-state movement. Many New Orleans residents relocated to other counties in Louisiana, but large numbers also migrated to Houston, TX, after Hurricane Katrina (Eyer et al 2018). When Puerto Ricans moved in large numbers to Orlando, FL, after Hurricane Maria, employment and high school attendance both increased in the area (Meléndez et al 2017;Peri et al 2020).…”