Victoria Wang: Adaptive Migration Facing Wildfires: Financial Constraints and Role of Government Aid

"Adaptive Migration in the Face of Wildfires: Financial Constraints and the Role of Government Aid"
Victoria Wang
University of California, Los Angeles
Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Biography:
Victoria Wang is a postdoctoral fellow at the NYU Furman Center and will join Wellesley College as an Assistant Professor in Fall 2026.She is an applied economist with research interests in environmental, public, and urban economics. Victoria received her PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), her master’s degree from the University of Chicago, and her bachelor’s degree from Rice University. She is an affiliate of the California Center for Population Research.

Abstract:
Natural disasters are expected to impact a large and increasing number of people with climate change. Adaptive migration – movement from risky to safe areas – is theorized to be a key strategy for minimizing the costs of natural disasters. This paper investigates how people migrate in response to wildfires in California, where fires have become more frequent and severe. I provide novel empirical estimates of the extent of adaptive migration, highlight financial constraints as a barrier, and identify the causal impact of receipt of government disaster aid on migration. Using detailed individual-level geographic data, I estimate the effect of wildfires on migration using a difference-in-differences (DID) event study design by comparing the migration behavior before and after a fire of individuals in blocks that are burned for the first time with that of those in never-burned blocks within a census tract. I find that an individual experiencing a first fire has a 6.5-percentage-point (p.p.) higher probability of out-migration after four years, an 18.5% increase. There is minimal adaptive migration: Those who experience a fire are not more likely to be in wildfire-safe areas. However, individuals less likely to be financially constrained after the fire (i.e. those with high credits scores) are more likely to adaptively migrate after four years. Leveraging a new instrument for aid receipt – taking advantage of the fact that politically competitive counties are more likely to receive aid – I find that government aid is associated with higher migration, albeit not to wildfire-safe areas. Overall, migration is occurring, but adaptive responses are small. Moreover, government aid could be redesigned to improve the level of migration out of risky areas.