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Presented at the Southern Demographic Association Conference, Durham, North Carolina, November 2-4, 2006.
This report is released to inform interested parties of ongoing research and to encourage discussion. The views expressed on statistical, methodological, technical, or operational issues are those of the author and not necessarily those of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Hurricane Katrina devastated the New Orleans and Mississippi Gulf Coast areas when it struck land on August 29, 2005. Almost four weeks later, on September 24, Hurricane Rita made landfall near the Louisiana-Texas border. The widespread damage caused by Katrina, and to a lesser extent Rita, uprooted thousands of people and changed the demographic, social, and economic face of the areas in the paths of the storms as well as those areas that saw great influxes of people escaping the destruction.
In order to measure the effects the hurricanes had on the population and housing in the area, the U.S. Census Bureau released the 2005 American Community Survey (ACS) Gulf Coast Area Special Products in June 2006. Two sets of estimates were produced to provide a picture of the population and housing units for Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas for the 8 months before and 4 months after Katrina and Rita. The migration estimates produced at that time were for where people currently lived and did not contain information on the specific location of their previous residences.
This analysis uses data from the 8-month (before) and 4-month (after) period data sets to determine the migration patterns of those displaced by the hurricanes. We will look at people whose residence 1 year ago was in specific county groups within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) areas of the four states most affected by the hurricanes and determine mobility rates to other areas within the FEMA areas, the remainder of each of the four states, and the remainder of the U.S. Along with the migration flows, mover characteristics will be examined. Additional analysis will focus on the quality of the data by comparing the 8-month estimates to the 2004 ACS.
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