Distribution and consequences of disaster property losses: Evidence from tax return of wildfire victims

Webinar recording.

We merge property-level damages for U.S. wildfires with individual tax and Census data to understand the demographics of wildfire victims and the financial consequences of wildfire property loss. The data illuminate disparities in hazard and structure vulnerability. Occupants of destroyed homes have lower pre-fire income than those in surviving homes. Wildfires reduce earnings for occupants of destroyed homes by 10% on average in years following the fire and 40% of occupants are still filing taxes from a different county 3 years after the event.

Judson Boomhower is an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California San Diego and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research focuses on environmental economics, energy markets, climate risk and adaptation, and the design of environmental and energy policy. Judson is a contributor to the U.S. National Climate Assessment, an invited researcher at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and a faculty affiliate at the E2e initiative. He joined UC San Diego after a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. He earned his PhD in Agricultural and Resource Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and BA and MS degrees from Stanford University.