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Recovery Migration After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Spatial Concentration and Intensification in the Migration System

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Demography

Abstract

Changes in the human migration systems of the Gulf of Mexico coastline counties affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita provide an example of how climate change may affect coastal populations. Crude climate change models predict a mass migration of “climate refugees,” but an emerging literature on environmental migration suggests that most migration will be short-distance and short-duration within existing migration systems, with implications for the population recovery of disaster-stricken places. In this research, we derive a series of hypotheses on recovery migration predicting how the migration system of hurricane-affected coastline counties in the Gulf of Mexico was likely to have changed between the pre-disaster and the recovery periods. We test these hypotheses using data from the Internal Revenue Service on annual county-level migration flows, comparing the recovery period migration system (2007–2009) with the pre-disaster period (1999–2004). By observing county-to-county ties and flows, we find that recovery migration was strong: the migration system of the disaster-affected coastline counties became more spatially concentrated, while flows within it intensified and became more urbanized. Our analysis demonstrates how migration systems are likely to be affected by the more intense and frequent storms anticipated by climate change scenarios, with implications for the population recovery of disaster-affected places.

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Notes

  1. The state and private relief agencies shape environmental migration destination choice in the emergency period. However, one cannot assume that evacuees of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were still located in evacuation shelters or other temporary housing in the recovery period.

  2. Studies of spatial units over time must consider the stability of the unit. Boundary lines for the counties in this analysis were stable.

  3. Hypothetical examples in Table S1 in Online Resource 1 illustrate the logic and use of these models. Our explanation here and in Table S1 is detailed in order to highlight the particular flows (and their summaries) of interest.

  4. This is necessary because the starting population values in Eq. (1) are arbitrary.

  5. Sensitivity tests restricting the comparison group to nearby noncoastal counties with a FEMA disaster designation (N = 64) are consistent with results reported using our preferred comparison group (all 124 nearby counties). Results are available from the corresponding author upon request.

  6. Counties highlighted in light gray were in the middle of the range or had no tie to the disaster-affected coastline counties. In either case, there was no substantial change in the estimated migrant flows between the pre-disaster and recovery periods.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by center Grant #R24 HD047873 and training Grant #T32HD07014 awarded to the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, center Grant #R24 HD041023 awarded to the Minnesota Population Center at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, and by funds to Curtis from the Wisconsin Agricultural Experimental Station and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation. We thank Lori Hunter and Patricia Romero-Lankao for organizing the CUPC-NCAR Workshop on Migration, Urbanization, and Climate Change held May 7–8, 2012, in Boulder, Colorado, where Curtis and Fussell began this project; the Department of Global Health Systems and Development at the Tulane University School of Public Health, where Fussell was hosted from 2012 to 2013; Lori Hunter and the University of Colorado Population Center for organizing the summer short course, Environmental Demography, that DeWaard attended on June 13–14, 2013; Lori Hunter and the anonymous reviewers at Demography for their insightful feedback; and William R. Buckingham at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison for his cartographic expertise.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1450 Linden Drive, 350 Agricultural Hall, Madison, WI, 53706, USA

    Katherine J. Curtis

  2. Population Studies and Training Center, Brown University, 68 Waterman Street, Box 1836, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Elizabeth Fussell

  3. University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, 909 Social Sciences, 267 19th Ave South, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA

    Jack DeWaard

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  1. Katherine J. Curtis
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Correspondence to Katherine J. Curtis.

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Curtis, K.J., Fussell, E. & DeWaard, J. Recovery Migration After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Spatial Concentration and Intensification in the Migration System. Demography 52, 1269–1293 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-015-0400-7

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