The Distribution and Consequences of Natural Disasters: Evidence from U.S. Wildfire Victims

The economic burden of natural disasters is shaped by who is exposed, who experiences losses, how those losses alter individual economic trajectories, and how affected communities evolve in the aftermath. We link property-level damage data from over 100 U.S. wildfires to administrative tax and Census data to understand individual-level relationships between disaster damage and economic outcomes. Residents of burned areas are wealthier than the U.S. population on average, but within these wildfire perimeters the likelihood that a home burns is negatively correlated with pre-fire income. Home destruction imposes costs beyond rebuilding the property: occupants of destroyed homes experience lower income for three years post-fire, producing cumulative income losses equal to 26 percent of pre-fire annual income. We do not detect income or employment effects for residents without direct property damage. Community recovery is slow and accompanied by changes in composition. Four years after a fire, half of destroyed addresses remain unoccupied and reoccupied addresses house residents with substantially higher incomes than before.