Research

Job Market Paper

Migration as Climate Adaptation: Evidence from California Wildfires

Natural disasters are expected to impact a large and increasing number of people with climate change. Adaptive migration – movement from risky to safe areas – is theorized to be a key strategy for minimizing the costs of natural disasters. This paper investigates how people migrate in response to wildfires in California, where fires have become more frequent and severe. I provide novel empirical estimates of the extent of adaptive migration, highlight financial constraints as a barrier, and identify the causal impact of receipt of government disaster aid on migration. Using detailed individual-level geographic data, I estimate the effect of wildfires on migration using a difference-in-differences (DID) event study design by comparing the migration behavior before and after a fire of individuals in blocks that are burned for the first time with that of those in never-burned blocks within a census tract. I find that an individual experiencing a first fire has a 6.5-percentage-point (p.p.) higher probability of out-migration after four years, an 18.5% increase. There is minimal adaptive migration: Those who experience a fire are not more likely to be in wildfire-safe areas. However, individuals less likely to be financially constrained after the fire (i.e. those with high credits scores) are more likely to adaptively migrate after four years. Leveraging a new instrument for aid receipt – taking advantage of the fact that politically competitive counties are more likely to receive aid – I find that government aid is associated with higher migration, albeit not to wildfire-safe areas. Overall, migration is occurring, but adaptive responses are small. Moreover, government aid could be redesigned to improve the level of migration out of risky areas.

Works in Progress

Burning Inequities: Wildfires, Social Safety Net, and Exacerbating Inequality

Post-Fire Housing Market: Evidence from Listings Data (with Eunkee Kwon and Clemens Pilgram)

Climate Refugees and Housing Prices: Migration-Induced Demand Shocks (with Siddhartha Biswas, Keyoung Lee, and David Zink)

The Impact of Parenthood on the Financial Well-Being of Families (with Lei Ma and Letian Yin)  - Current Status: Linking Birth Records with Consumer Credit Panel