The impact of Hurricane Maria on out-migration from Puerto Rico: Evidence from Facebook data
Monica Alexander,
Emilio Zagheni and
Kivan Polimis
No 39s6c, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Abstract:
Natural disasters such as hurricanes can cause substantial population out-migration. However, the magnitude of population movements is difficult to estimate using only traditional sources of migration data. We utilize data obtained from Facebook's advertising platform to estimate out-migration from Puerto Rico in the months after Hurricane Maria. We find evidence to indicate a 17.0% increase in the number of Puerto Rican migrants present in the US over the period October 2017 to January 2018. States with the biggest increases were Florida, New York and Pennsylvania, and there were disproportionately larger increases in the 15-30 age groups and for men compared to women. Additionally, we find evidence of subsequent return migration to Puerto Rico over the period January 2018 to March 2018. These results illustrate the power of complementing social media and traditional data to monitor demographic indicators over time, particularly after a shock, such as a natural disaster, to understand large changes in population characteristics.
Date: 2019-01-28
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mig and nep-pay
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)
Downloads: (external link)
https://osf.io/download/5c4f53690d1c9e001a4cb667/
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:39s6c
DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/39s6c
Access Statistics for this paper
More papers in SocArXiv from Center for Open Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by OSF (contact@cos.io).