The Distribution and Consequences of Natural Disasters: Evidence from U.S. Wildfire Victims

Patrick Baylis, Judson Boomhower, Jonathan Colmer () and John L. Voorheis

No 35675, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: The economic burden of natural disasters is shaped by who is exposed, who experiences losses, how those losses alter individual economic trajectories, and how affected communities evolve in the aftermath. We link property-level damage data from over 100 U.S. wildfires to administrative tax and Census data to understand individual-level relationships between disaster damage and economic outcomes. Residents of burned areas are wealthier than the U.S. population on average, but within these wildfire perimeters the likelihood that a home burns is negatively correlated with pre-fire income. Home destruction imposes costs beyond rebuilding the property: occupants of destroyed homes experience lower income for three years post-fire, producing cumulative income losses equal to 26 percent of pre-fire annual income. We do not detect income or employment effects for residents without direct property damage. Community recovery is slow and accompanied by changes in composition. Four years after a fire, half of destroyed addresses remain unoccupied and reoccupied addresses house residents with substantially higher incomes than before.

JEL-codes: D31 Q54 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08
Note: DAE EEE LS PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35675.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:35675

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35675
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().