Income-based inequality in post-disaster migration is lower in high resilience areas: Evidence from U.S. internal migration
Loading...
Access rights
openAccess
publishedVersion
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
This publication is imported from Aalto University research portal.
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
View/Open full text file from the Research portal (opens in new window)
Other link related to publication (opens in new window)
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
View/Open full text file from the Research portal (opens in new window)
Other link related to publication (opens in new window)
Authors
Date
2022-03
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
12
Series
Environmental Research Letters, Volume 17, issue 3, pp. 1-12
Abstract
Residential relocation following environmental disasters is an increasingly necessary climate change adaptation measure. However, relocation is among the costliest individual-level adaptation measures, meaning that it may be cost prohibitive for disadvantaged groups. As climate change continues to worsen, it is important to better understand how existing socioeconomic inequalities affect climate migration and how they may be offset. In this study we use network regression models to look at how internal migration patterns in the United States vary by disaster-related property damage, household income, and local-level disaster resilience. Our results show that post-disaster migration patterns vary considerably by the income level of sending and receiving counties, which suggests that income-based inequality impacts both individuals' access to relocation and the ability of disaster-afflicted areas to rebuild. We further find evidence that income-based inequality in post-disaster outmigration is attenuated in areas with higher disaster resilience, not due to increased relocation out of poorer areas but instead because there is decreased relocation from richer ones. This finding suggests that, as climate adaptation measures, relocation and resilience-building are substitutes, with the implication that resilience incentivizes in situ adaptation, which can be a long term drain on individual wellbeing and climate adaptation resources.Description
Funding Information: We thank Thomas Birkland, Louise Comfort, Lukas Fesenfeld, Vally Koubi, Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen, Omer Yalcin, panel participants at PolNet 2021, APSA 2021, ECPR 2021, and ISA 2021, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback. We thank Liu et al () for sharing their replication materials. This study was funded in part by Academy of Finland Grants SA-320780 and SA-320781. Open access for this article is funded by the Helsinki University Library. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by IOP Publishing Ltd.
Keywords
climate change adaptation, climate migration, disaster resilience, inequality, network analysis
Other note
Citation
Chen, T H Y & Lee, B 2022, ' Income-based inequality in post-disaster migration is lower in high resilience areas: Evidence from U.S. internal migration ', Environmental Research Letters, vol. 17, no. 3, 034043, pp. 1-12 . https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ac5692