Demographic Effects of Major Hurricanes: An Analysis of Long-Term Neighborhood Change Following Big Storms of the 1990s

Jeremy Pais, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)
James R. Elliott, University of Oregon

Much research has examined the social, psychological, and economic impacts of major natural disasters, but few have considered their demographic effects and fewer still have moved beyond specific case studies to consider how places, in general, recover demographically after catastrophe. In this study, we contribute to social understanding of natural disasters by investigating their demographic futures as well as their pasts and by doing so for multiple disasters. We focus on U.S. places hit by the costliest hurricanes of the early 1990s, specifically on areas receiving over a billion dollars worth of property damage. For these areas we merge localized storm data from the national HAZUS database with demographic data on individual census tracts to test and refine general propositions about how neighborhoods change after a major coastal disaster, paying particular attention to patterns and processes of power and vulnerability following the event, as communities struggle to rebuild.