The effect of natural disasters on economic activity in US counties: A century of data

More than 100 natural disasters strike the United States every year, causing extensive fatalities and damages. We construct the universe of US federally designated natural disasters from 1920 to 2010. We find that severe disasters increase out-migration rates at the county level by 1.5 percentage points and lower housing prices/rents by 2.5–5.0 percent. The migration response to milder disasters is smaller but has been increasing over time. The economic response to disasters is most consistent with falling local productivity and labor demand. Disasters that convey more information about future disaster risk increase the pace of out-migration.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Journal of Urban Economics

• Publication date

  2020-07-01

• Fields of study

  Geography, Business, Economics, Environmental Science

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/J.JUE.2020.103257
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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