The seism effect on depopulation in the territories of the Central Italy Earthquake

Six years on from the earthquake in central Italy, in the municipalities in the earthquake zone the resident population has significantly decreased. Assessing to what extent the earthquake had an impact is not straightforward as in these territories the demographic trend was already declining even before this event. This study aims at estimating the impact following a diff-in-diff event-study econometric approach, which allowed to test whether before the earthquake (and given a set of pre-determined control variables) the population dynamics for the municipalities in the control group were comparable to those for the municipalities in the earthquake zone. The findings suggest that the earthquake significantly exacerbated the demographic decrease, with an estimated effect corresponding on average to almost two fifths of the reduction actually observed. The impact is statistically significant for the whole area, but its intensity was higher for the municipalities that suffered the most damage. The overall effect was mostly driven by a worsening in internal net migration. An impact in terms of an increased share of people aged 65 years or more was also detected.