Abstract POPULATION CHANGE IN NEW ORLEANS AFTER HURRICANE KATRINA Elizabeth Fussell The overall objective of the KATRINA@10 Program is to advance disaster science by including both breadth and depth in a set of interrelated studies. The objective of this project (RP5; NEW NOLA) is to use the restricted use data of the American Community Survey (ACS) to investigate change in the demographic and socio-economic composition of the population of the City of New Orleans. The restricted data will allow us to accurately measure time since the date of Hurricane Katrina and to distinguish in- and out-migrants and non- migrants. We focus on (1) change in the population composition of New Orleans over time and (2) differences in the demographic and socio-economic characteristics of in-migrants and out-migrants compared to non- migrants and to the pre-Katrina New Orleans population. In addition, this project will provide trend data and contextual information to the other program components, which focus on specific vulnerable populations (RP1, RP2, and RP3) and on pre-Katrina residents four years after the disaster (RP4). This research fills a critical gap in knowledge of recovery-related migration after a disaster that will be of use to disaster response planners and public and private agencies involved in medium- and long-term disaster recovery. It will make several significant contributions. First, it will extend knowledge about New Orleans' recovery of population over a ten year period, much longer is currently available, and reveal migratory differences between socio-economic and demographic groups. Second, while examining individual migratory behavior, its focus on the population composition of New Orleans is ultimately more useful for disaster response planners, urban planners, and other stakeholders in the recovery of the City. Third, it will advance disaster research by examining the reciprocal relationship between individual behavior and social context, thus joining these two contexts which have typically been treated separately. The project's innovation is the application of propensity score reweighting techniques to the restricted use ACS data to demonstrate how this relatively new source of migration data can be used to analyze place-based population redistribution. The results will provide a better understanding of population redistribution after a disaster that will assist researchers, policymakers, and the public in preparing for future disasters.
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