Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/175215 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
Staff Report No. 807
Publisher: 
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York, NY
Abstract: 
Federal disaster insurance - in the form of national flood insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and other programs - is designed to nationally distribute large geography-specific shocks such as earthquakes and hurricanes. This study examines how residents were affected on net by the local long-run impacts of Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent policy response. Using a unique fifteen-year panel of 5 percent of adult Americans' credit reports, we find, ten years after the hurricane, higher rates of insolvency and lower homeownership among inundated residents of New Orleans relative to their nonflooded neighbors. Residents of mostly white and mostly black neighborhoods obtain similar short- and long-term outcomes, though residents of white neighborhoods are more likely to have migrated out of the city. Inundated New Orleans residents appear more likely to have migrated to neighboring states but substantially less likely than nonflooded residents to have migrated north. However, we find that residents of the large Gulf Opportunity Zone (GO Zone) surrounding New Orleans, who were also eligible for various federal programs, obtained net financial benefits in the years after Katrina; a decade later, those residents have higher rates of consumption and homeownership and lower rates of bankruptcy and foreclosure than residents outside the GO Zone. These net gains are found to be progressive - favoring young and low-income residents - and are broadly similar across black and white neighborhoods.
Subjects: 
disaster insurance
household finances
homeownership
migration
JEL: 
D14
H84
Q54
R11
R23
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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