DEMUS (Demography of Environmental Migration in the United States)

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DEMUS (Demography of Environmental Migration in the United States)#

Elizabeth Fussell, Jack DeWaard, Katherine Curtis, James Done, and Sara Ronnkvist

This project plans to integrate IRS county-level migration data with data on tropical cyclones, wildfire events, flood events, wet bulb temperatures and air pollution, county health rankings and roadmaps data, and national neighborhood data archive data, to ask the broad question: How do tropical cyclones affect county-level migration systems, where migration systems are the counties connected through in- and out-migration flows, and do these dynamics differ for age, sex, race/ethnicity, and nativity groups?

Working Repository > github.com/d4hackweek/d4-demus

Datasets#

  • IRS county-level migration data in lieu of a restricted use dataset we have built in the FSRDC

  • Restricted use data set: Master Address File - Migration Flows (MAF-MIF)

  • A suite of historical tropical cyclone wind and rain metrics data set harmonized to county-year level

  • Wildfire events (and smoke)

  • Flood events

  • Wet bulb temperature and air pollution

  • County Health Rankings and Roadmaps data

  • National Neighborhood Data Archive data

These will be harmonized at the county-year level and joined to the MAF-MIF

Team Bios#

  • Elizabeth Fussell: Elizabeth Fussell is a sociologist and demographer. She joined Brown University and the PSTC in 2014. Her research focuses on environmental drivers of migration and social inequalities in migration, health, and other post-disaster outcomes. She is also Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal, Population & Environment. Since 2005, when she was an Assistant Professor at Tulane University and Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, she has investigated the long-term effects of that disaster on the residential mobility, health, and wellbeing of the residents of New Orleans using innovative methods and datasets. She has extended this research agenda to study the effects of hurricanes and other exogenous shocks on migration and internal migration systems in the United States, with a new focus on Puerto Rico. Her research is supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Russell Sage Foundation. Fussell is an author on the Fifth National Climate Assessment’s Chapter on Human Social Systems.

  • Jack DeWaard: Jack DeWaard provides overall scientific leadership for Social and Behavioral Science Research at the Population Council to tackle pressing social, economic, health, and climate issues worldwide. He oversees research activities, quality, and learning, as well as provides strategic direction for the Council’s Population, Environmental Risks, and the Climate Crisis (PERCC) initiative. DeWaard is also an external affiliate in the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the University of Washington. DeWaard holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, an MA in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and a BA in sociology and philosophy from Seattle Pacific University.

  • Katherine Curtis: Dr. Katherine J. Curtis is Professor of Community & Environmental Sociology and Associate Director of the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work is centered in demography and extends to spatial, environmental, rural, and applied demography, and focuses on two central themes: population-environment interactions, most centrally the relationship between demographic, economic, and environmental forces; and spatial and temporal dimensions of social and economic inequality, most centrally historical and local forces perpetuating racial disparities. In her work, Curtis adopts place-based theoretical frameworks and employs advanced spatial and spatio-temporal statistical approaches to analyze questions about inequality, which has profound and far-reaching impacts on population wellbeing. Recent efforts have integrated qualitative analytical strategies including oral histories, in-depth interviews, and surveys. Current projects focus on spatial differentiation in migration and fertility responses to environmental events (NICHD and NSF), age- and race-specific net migration (NICHD), and rural livelihoods and spatial connectedness (USDA).

  • James Done: James Done is a climate scientist at the NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research. He advances process-based understanding of tropical cyclone variability and change across spatial and temporal scales, creating usable understanding for exploring impacts. As a senior academic fellow of the WTW Research Network he connects with risk managers to strengthen the science and ensure outcomes are useful, usable, and used. In recognition of his scientific leadership, he testified before the U.S. Congress on extreme weather in a changing climate. James received a PhD in Meteorology from the University of Reading, UK in 2003.

  • Sara Ronnkvist: Sara Ronnkvist is a 5th year Sociology PhD student at the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a predoctoral fellow at the Center for Demography and Ecology. She has a B.S. in Statistics from Iowa State University. Sara broadly studies demographic responses to environmental change, with a focus on migration, fertility, and health. Additionally, her work considers how context may shape the relationship between the environment and demographic phenomena. Sara has experience working with geospatial data and integrating this type of data with demographic data in R.

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