Beyond disasters: A longitudinal analysis of natural hazards' unequal impacts on residential instability

Abstract

This study investigates the unequal impact of natural hazard damage on people's residential instability over time by shifting analyses from an event-centered design common in disaster studies to a longitudinal, population-centered approach. To demonstrate this approach, we link annual data on property damages from natural hazards at the county level to geocoded data on nationally representative samples of men and women from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Results indicate that the average US household lives in a county that experiences five documented hazards per year, totaling $20 million in direct property damage. Findings also indicate that as local damages accrue over time, so does residential instability, net of other factors. This pattern is particularly strong for Black and Latina women, for whom measurable differences in personal and social resources interact with hazard damages to significantly increase residential instability over time.