The Local Labor Market Impacts of US Megafires

Benjamin Jones and Shana McDermott
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Shana McDermott: Department of Economics, Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 16, 1-15

Abstract: As we learn to sustainably coexist with wildfire, there is an urgent need to improve our understanding of its multidimensional impacts on society. To this end, we undertake a nationwide study to estimate how megafires (wildfires > 100,000 acres in size) affect US labor market outcomes in communities located within the flame zone. Both year-of-fire and over-time dynamic impacts are studied between 2010?2017. We find that counties located within a megafire flame zone experience significantly lower per capita wage earnings across multiple sources of earnings data for up to two years after megafire event occurrence. We find preliminary evidence that impacts are nonlinear over megafire size. These results highlight a new dimension of megafire impacts and expand the scope of the potential costs of megafires that should be considered in benefit-cost analyses of wildfire control and suppression decisions, especially along sustainability dimensions.

Keywords: megafires; labor market; wages; local communities; sustainability with fire (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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