history: approximately 1.5 million people aged 16 years and older evacuated from their homes ( Groen and Polivka 2008b). Before making landfall and in its wake, Katrina caused one of the largest and most abrupt relocations of people in U.S. Katrina caused massive flooding in New Orleans and catastrophic damage along the Gulf coasts of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Hurricane Katrina, which struck the Gulf Coast in August 2005, has had lasting and farreaching effects. Katrina is also associated with an increase in the percentage of older residents, a decrease in the percentage of residents with low income/education, and an increase in the percentage of residents with high income/education. Katrina is associated with substantial shifts in the racial composition of the affected areas (namely, a decrease in the percentage of residents who are black) and an increasing presence of Hispanics. The difference between the composition of evacuees who returned and the composition of evacuees who did not return is the primary force behind changes in the composition of the affected areas in the first two years after the storm.

Blacks were less likely to return than whites, but this difference is primarily related to the geographical pattern of storm damage rather than to race per se. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we show that an evacuee’s age, family income, and the severity of damage in an evacuee’s county of origin are important determinants of whether an evacuee returned during the first year after the storm. This article examines the decision of Hurricane Katrina evacuees to return to their pre-Katrina areas and documents how the composition of the Katrina-affected region changed over time.

A american going home series