Demographic Consequences of Shocks and Natural Disasters

by Edward Hugh

Strange as it may seem this is a topic which few seem to think about. A year or so ago I posted here about this presentation by Wolfgang Lutz on his year's research at the IIASA. Since we were talking about low fertility, some wit in the comments section decided to ask me what the relevance of slides on the Tsunami were. Well if they went to this PAA session they would quickly learn. There are four excellent papers here, which it is hard to do justice to in one simple blog post.

Perhaps the issue of the migratory impact of hurricane Katrina is the one which fascinates me the most. Shortly after the disaster in New Orleans there was some speculation in the press that this would produce long-term demograohic consequences, and indeed I posted about these at the time. Well now we learn that James Elliott of Tulane University is going to try and track the process. Truly fascinating:

The proposed study will report on Phase I of a larger research project designed to track and analyze migratory behavior among New Orleanians displaced by Hurricane Katrina, which triggered the largest, most complete urban evacuation in U.S. history. While the social scientific literature on migration and urbanization has a long tradition, this genre has never before addressed such a large, unplanned social experiment as the mandatory evacuation of an entire city. The primary objectives of the proposed paper are to identify a multi-stage sample of evacuees; design and implement a survey that will collect data on their short-term migratory behavior (to be fielded in Fall/Winter 2005); and to test hypotheses about this behavior to assess how well extant theories and perspectives predict or must be amended to understand extreme scenarios of mass internal migration.

Full Paper: Tracking Migratory Behavior of Hurricane Katrina Evacuees: A Three-Stage Sample of New Orleanians, James Elliott, Tulane University