The effect of the earthquake in Central Italy on the depopulation of the affected territories

Peripheral and demographically fragile territories could be less resilient to the impact of large natural shocks such as earthquakes, but causal evidence is still limited, in particular for Western Europe. By leveraging data at municipal level, this paper studies the effects on the resident population of a large earthquake that affected a wide area in Central Italy in 2016. The demographic decline that the area was already experiencing before the event significantly worsened afterwards. In order to identify the earthquake’s impact a diff-in-diff event-study model is applied, thereby testing whether the control group (made up of similar municipalities in terms of geo-morphological and predetermined urbanization characteristics) provides a comparable population pattern before the event. The results show that the earthquake significantly exacerbated the population decrease, with the impact widening over time and corresponding to almost two fifths of the reduction actually observed. Although statistically significant for the whole area, the impact was more intense for the municipalities that suffered the most damage. An increasing effect on the share of elderly population was also detected. The overall impact was mostly driven by a worsening in net internal migration.