1,761,567 research outputs found
Going Home after Hurricane Katrina: Determinants of Return Migration and Changes in Affected Areas
Get PDFThis paper examines the decision of Hurricane Katrina evacuees to return to their pre- Katrina areas and documents how the composition of the Katrina-affected region changed over time. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we show that an evacuee’s age and the severity of damage in an evacuee’s county of origin are important determinants of whether an evacuee returned during the first year after the storm. Blacks were less likely to return than whites, but this difference is primarily related to the geographical pattern of storm damage rather than to race per se. The difference between the composition of evacuees who returned and the composition of evacuees who did not return is the primary force behind changes in the composition of the affected areas in the first two years after the storm. Katrina is associated with substantial shifts in the racial composition of the affected areas (namely a decrease in the percentage of residents who are black) and an increasing presence of Hispanics. Katrina is also associated with an increase in the percentage of older residents, a decrease in the percentage of residents with low income/education, and an increase in the percentage of residents with high income/education.Hurricane Katrina; Geographic Mobility; Return Migration; Disasters
When The Saints Come Marching In: Effects of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on Student Evacuees
Get PDFI examine academic performance and college going for public school students affected by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Students who are forced to switch schools due to the hurricanes experience sharp declines in test scores in the first year following the hurricane. However, by the second and third years after the disaster, Katrina evacuees displaced from Orleans Parish appear to benefit from the displacement, experiencing a .15 standard deviation improvement in scores. The test score gains are concentrated among students whose initial schools were in the lowest quintile of the test score distribution and among students who leave the New Orleans MSA. Katrina evacuees from suburban areas and Rita evacuees (from the Lake Charles area) eventually recover most of the ground lost during 05-06 but do not experience long term gains relative to their pre-Katrina test scores. High school age Orleans evacuees have higher college enrollment rates than their predecessors from the same high schools. Meanwhile, Katrina evacuees from the suburbs experience a 3.5 percentage point drop in their rate of enrollment in four year colleges. Those evacuees do not to make up for the decline in the subsequent two years. Later cohorts of suburban New Orleans evacuees are unaffected. The results suggest that for students in the lowest performing schools, the long term gains to achievement from switching schools can more than offset even substantial costs of disruption.
Cooperative comebacks: resilience in the face of the Hurricane Katrina Catastrophe (New Orleans and Southern Mississippi, May 2005–May 2006)
Get PDFMillions of lives were dramatically changed by Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Numerous businesses were wiped out. People lost their homes, their livelihoods, their lives. Nearly two years after Katrina, some sectors of the aff ected region have proved to be more resilient than others. Th rough the able data collection and analysis of Mark Klinedinst, an economics professor at the University of Southern Mississippi, this report examines the plight of credit unions in the face of this disaster. Klinedinst compares credit unions with banks in southern Mississippi and in New Orleans at both the aggregate and case study levels. Klinedinst argues that analyzing credit unions under this kind of duress may be useful in identifying cooperative strengths and weaknesses that are not apparent under normal circumstances. These findings may assist credit unions with larger contingency planning as it relates to disaster preparedness.credit unions; banks; hurricane; Katrina; cooperatives; finance
The broken trailer fallacy: seeing the unseen effects of government policies in post-Katrina New Orleans
Get PDFPurpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyze some of the unseen negative effects of the post-Katrina government policies dealing with housing in New Orleans. Design/methodology/approach – Since Hurricane Katrina, the government, along with private for profit and not-for-profit organizations, has worked to rebuild the city of New Orleans. This effort is most evident in the response to the housing crisis that followed the storm. The government has spent billions of dollars and brought thousands of people in to rebuild homes and other infrastructure in the long run and to provide stopgap measures in the short run. The approximately 120,000 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) trailers in the region are one of the most visible examples of government efforts. Findings – The paper finds that while the trailers did provide benefits to those who received them, it could be argued that the government’s policies aimed toward solving the housing crisis suffer from Fre´de´ric Bastiat’s broken window fallacy. FEMA trailers and the multitude of workers brought in are examples of what is seen, and, as Bastiat showed, we must also look at what is unseen.United States of America; Natural Disasters; Man-Made Disasters; Floods; Economic Theory
Disaster Relief through the Tax Code: Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Opportunity Zone
Get PDFThis project investigates the impact of geo-graphically targeted Federal tax relief enacted in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. To facilitate administration of relief efforts and define eligibility for the temporary tax law changes, the Gulf Opportunity Zone (GO Zone) was created. We estimate the initial impacts of these tax incentives using propensity score matching (PSM) and Mahalanobis metric matching (MM) methods, combined with difference-in-difference (DD) estimation, to limit the confounding influences of observable and fixed unobservable differences between counties affected by these incentives and similarly storm-damaged counties in the region that were not included in the GO Zone. Results show that per capita personal income and net earnings increased more rapidly in GO Zone counties that experienced minimal storm damage than in similar non-GO Zone counties in the GO Zone States and neighboring States., Public Economics, H2, H24, H25,
Political Apology in the Discursive Construction of Hurricane Katrina
No full textWith the recent events of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the United States saw a natural disaster turn into a national disaster as the storm devastated the American citizens of the Gulf Coast region. The discourse regarding Hurricane Katrina is uniquely characterized by its political component whose primary topical focus was the responsibility. In response to widespread public unrest and complaint, many politicians issued apologies regarding the government response to Hurricane Katrina. This study will examine the theme of responsibility through analysis of the complaint-apology adjacency pair; that is, the complaints voiced by citizens and the apologies offered by two key political figures in Katrina's political discourse—Ray Nagin, mayor of New Orleans, LA and George W. Bush, President of the United States. Specifically, I will use the notions of framing, voice and intertextuality to determine how discourse participants present other relevant voices and how those participants represent their own voices the dialogical negotiation of responsibility. I intend to compare and contrast how these two participants manage the acceptance of responsibility in order to understand the significance of their distinct discursive voices and perspectives. Analysis of the complaint-apology discourse structure should reveal how varying personal and public perspectives of political discourse participants affected their participation in the political discourse about Hurricane Katrina. This analysis demonstrates the importance of voice and dialogicality in the discursive construction of apology. Moreover, it suggests that researchers who are beginning to investigate political apology take into account factors that could influence variation in voices participating in that discourse which could, in turn produce variation in the forms of political apology and how it is managed pragmatically
Can New Orleans Play Its Way Past Katrina? The Role of Professional Sports in the Redevelopment of New Orleans
Get PDFHurricane Katrina devastated the city of New Orleans in late August 2005, and debates are now underway across the country concerning strategies for reconstructing the City. A key to redevelopment involves encouraging former citizens and businesses to return. Both of New Orleans’s professional sports teams, the National Football League Saints and the National Basketball Association Hornets, have taken up residence in other cities, and the question of what the city should provide in the way of financial accommodation to encourage them to return should be considered in devising a reconstruction plan. Infrastructure to facilitate professional sports and mega-events constitutes a significant fraction of capital budgets for even the largest cities. New Orleans has hosted a disproportionate share of mega-sports events in the United States given its size and demographics. An important question concerns whether these events have contributed enough to the New Orleans economy to justify reinvestment in infrastructure to restore New Orleans’s place as a leading host of professional sports and mega-events in the United States. A careful review of the evidence suggests that the redevelopment efforts of New Orleans are better directed at first providing infrastructure that will encourage the return of its middle class citizenry and the restoration of its culture. Playing host to professional sports and mega-events does have symbolic significance, but it is arguable that the city cannot afford to invite guests until it has the means to accommodate them.sports, public finance, economic impact, New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina
Social policy approaches to Hurricane Katrina and the Christchurch Earthquakes
No full textUsing secondary sources, the purpose of this thesis is to compare the two disasters – Hurricane Katrina in the United States and the two Christchurch Earthquakes in New Zealand and show how the countries managed the aftermath of each of the disasters. The thesis explores Esping-Andersen’s concept of welfare typologies and shows where New Zealand and the United States fit into his framework. The thesis also reviewed some critiques to Esping-Andersen’s typology. It details the events of the disasters and how the respective governments responded given their social policy approaches
What Determines Giving to Hurricane Katrina Victims? Experimental Evidence on Income, Race, and Fairness
Get PDFWe investigate determinants of private and public generosity to Katrina victims using an artifactual field experiment. In this experiment, respondents from the general population viewed a short audiovisual presentation that manipulated respondents' perceptions of the income, race, and deservingness of Katrina victims in one of two small cities. Respondents then decided how to split $100 between themselves and a charity helping Katrina victims in this small city. We also collected survey data on subjective support for government spending to help the Katrina victims in the cities. We find, first, that our income manipulation had a significant effect on giving; respondents gave more when they perceived the victims to be poorer. Second, the race and deservingness manipulations had virtually no effect on average giving. Third, the averages mask substantial racial bias among sub-groups of our sample. For instance, the subgroup of whites who identify with their ethnic or racial group strongly biased their giving against blacks. Finally, subjective support for government spending to help Katrina victims was significantly influenced by both our race and deservingness manipulations, but not by the income manipulation. White respondents supported significantly less public spending for black victims and significantly more for victims who were described in more flattering terms, such as being helpful and law-abiding.
- …
