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Flood Risk, Insurance, and Housing in the United States
June 2026
Working Paper Number:
CES-26-37
Flooding is among the most salient natural hazards facing households in the United States. A large body of evidence has documented a pattern of disproportionate social vulnerability in floodplains. However, little evidence exists on how household-level exposure to flood risk is distributed. We fill this gap by combining parcel-level flood risk with confidential linked survey and administrative data held at the US Census Bureau. Although net migration to Census blocks in floodplains has increased in recent years, there has been essentially no net migration to parcels with flood risk or change in the overall share of households living in floodplains. Income gradients in flood risk are highly non-linear at the household level, with slightly negative income gradients for the bottom 90 percentiles of the income distribution that are dwarfed by disproportionate exposure in the top decile, especially when considering multiple property ownership. This nonlinearity is largely driven by differences in building type and homeownership within narrow income groups. In contrast to the conclusions in the literature using aggregate data, our household-level analysis suggests that households in floodplains are less disadvantaged and increasingly protected from the impacts of flooding, even as a vulnerable subpopulation of low-income, uninsured homeowners remains.
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Household Wealth and Entrepreneurial Career Choices: Evidence from Climate Disasters
July 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-39
This study investigates how household wealth affects the human capital of startups, based on U.S. Census individual-level employment data, deed records, and geographic information system (GIS) data. Using floods as a wealth shock, a regression discontinuity analysis shows inundated residents are 7% less likely to work in startups relative to their neighbors outside the flood boundary, within a 0.1-mile-wide band. The effect is more pronounced for homeowners, consistent with the wealth effect. The career distortion leads to a significant long-run income loss, highlighting the importance of self-insurance for human capital allocation.
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After the Storm: How Emergency Liquidity Helps Small Businesses Following Natural Disasters
April 2024
Working Paper Number:
CES-24-20
Does emergency credit prevent long-term financial distress? We study the causal effects of government-provided recovery loans to small businesses following natural disasters. The rapid financial injection might enable viable firms to survive and grow or might hobble precarious firms with more risk and interest obligations. We show that the loans reduce exit and bankruptcy, increase employment and revenue, unlock private credit, and reduce delinquency. These effects, especially the crowding-in of private credit, appear to reflect resolving uncertainty about repair. We do not find capital reallocation away from neighboring firms and see some evidence of positive spillovers on local entry.
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Temperature and Local Industry Concentration
October 2023
Working Paper Number:
CES-23-51
We use plant-level data from the US Census of Manufacturers to study the short and long run effects of temperature on manufacturing activity. We document that temperature shocks significantly increase energy costs and lower the productivity of small manufacturing plants, while large plants are mostly unaffected. In US counties that experienced higher increases in average temperatures between the 1980s and the 2010s, these heterogeneous effects have led to higher concentration of manufacturing activity within large plants, and a reallocation of labor from small to large manufacturing establishments. We offer a preliminary discussion of potential mechanisms explaining why large manufacturing firms might be better equipped for long-run adaptation to climate change, including their ability to hedge across locations, easier access to finance, and higher managerial skills.
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A Shore Thing: Post-Hurricane Outcomes for Businesses in Coastal Areas
September 2020
Working Paper Number:
CES-20-27
During the twenty-first century, hurricanes, heavy storms, and flooding have affected many areas in the United States. Natural disasters and climate change can cause property damage and could have an impact on a variety of business outcomes. This paper builds upon existing research and literature that analyzes the impact of natural disasters on businesses. Specifically, we look at the differential effect of eight hurricanes during the period 2000-2009 on establishments in coastal counties relative to establishments in coastal-adjacent or inland counties. Our outcomes of interest include establishment employment and death. We find that following a hurricane event, establishments located in a coastal county have lower employment and increased probability of death relative to establishments in non-coastal counties.
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LEHD Infrastructure S2014 files in the FSRDC
September 2018
Working Paper Number:
CES-18-27R
The Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program at the U.S. Census Bureau, with the support of several national research agencies, maintains a set of infrastructure files using administrative data provided by state agencies, enhanced with information from other administrative data sources, demographic and economic (business) surveys and censuses. The LEHD Infrastructure Files provide a detailed and comprehensive picture of workers, employers, and their interaction in the U.S. economy. This document describes the structure and content of the 2014 Snapshot of the LEHD Infrastructure files as they are made available in the Census Bureau's secure and restricted-access Research Data Center network. The document attempts to provide a comprehensive description of all researcher-accessible files, of their creation, and of any modifications made to the files to facilitate researcher access.
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Storms and Jobs: The Effect of Hurricanes on Individuals' Employment and Earnings over the Long Term*
January 2015
Working Paper Number:
CES-15-21R
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005, destroying homes and businesses and causing mass evacuations. The economic effects of disasters are often studied at a regional level, but little is known about the responsiveness of individuals' employment and earnings to the damages, disruption, and rebuilding'particularly in the longer run. Our analysis is based on data that tracks workers over nine years, including seven years after the storms. We estimate models that compare the evolution of earnings for workers who resided in a storm-affected area with those who resided in a suitable control counties. We find that, on average, the storms reduced the earnings of affected individuals during the first year after the storm. These losses reflect various aspects of the short-run disruption caused by the hurricanes, including job separations, migration to other areas, and business contractions. Starting in the third year after the storms, however, we find that the earnings of affected individuals outpaced the earnings of individuals in the control sample. We provide evidence that the long-term earnings gains were the result of wage growth in the affected areas relative to the control areas, due to reduced labor supply and increased labor demand, especially in sectors related to rebuilding. Despite the short-term earnings losses, we find a net increase in average quarterly earnings among affected individuals over the entire post-storm period. However, those who worked in sectors closely tied to tourism or the size of the local population experienced net earnings losses.
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LEHD Infrastructure files in the Census RDC - Overview
June 2014
Working Paper Number:
CES-14-26
The Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) Program at the U.S. Census Bureau, with the support of several national research agencies, maintains a set of infrastructure files using administrative data provided by state agencies, enhanced with information from other administrative data sources, demographic and economic (business) surveys and censuses. The LEHD Infrastructure Files provide a detailed and comprehensive picture of workers, employers, and their interaction in the U.S. economy. This document describes the structure and content of the 2011 Snapshot of the LEHD Infrastructure files as they are made available in the Census Bureaus secure and restricted-access Research Data Center network. The document attempts to provide a comprehensive description of all researcher-accessible files, of their creation, and of any modifcations made to the files to facilitate researcher access.
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TAKEN BY STORM: BUSINESS SURVIVAL IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE KATRINA
April 2014
Working Paper Number:
CES-14-20
We use Hurricane Katrina's damage to the Mississippi coast in 2005 as a natural experiment to study business survival in the aftermath of a cost shock. We find that damaged establishments that returned to operation were more resilient than those that had never been damaged. This effect is particularly strong for establishments belonging to younger and smaller rms. The effect of damage on establishments in older and larger chains was more limited, and they were subsequently less resilient having survived the damage. These selection effects persist up to five years after the initial shock. We interpret these findings as evidence that the effect of the shock is tied to the presence of financial and other constraints.
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The Location of Displaced New Orleans Residents in the Year After Hurricane Katrina
September 2012
Working Paper Number:
CES-12-19
Using individual data from the restricted version of the American Community Survey, we examined the displacement locations of pre-Katrina adult residents of New Orleans in the year after the hurricane. Over half (53%) of adults had returned to'or remained in'the New Orleans metropolitan area, with just under one-third of the total returning to the dwelling in which they resided prior to Katrina. Among the remainder, Texas was the leading location with almost 40% of those living away from the metropolitan area (18% of the total), followed by other locations in Louisiana (12%), the South region of the US other than Louisiana and Texas (12%), and elsewhere in the U.S. (5%). Black adults were considerably more likely than nonblack adults to be living elsewhere in Louisiana, in Texas, and elsewhere in the South. The observed race disparity was not accounted for by any of the demographic or socioeconomic covariates in the multinomial logistic regression models. Consistent with hypothesized effects, we found that young adults (25'39 years of age) were more likely to move further away from New Orleans and that adults born outside Louisiana were substantially more likely to have relocated away from the state.
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