Frank Stafford Katherine McGonagle Robert F. Schoeni University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
As the economic consequences of Hurricane Katrina are tallied this disaster will almost certainly be the single largest natural disaster to hit the US in the past 100 years. Large numbers of persons were evacuated from affected areas before and during the hurricane; it is possible that these persons may not return to their home states in the foreseeable future. Recent research, particularly in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, has shown that large-scale mass traumatic events are likely to have substantial impact on population behavior with critical implications for population well-being in the long term. Previous population-based research has found an increase in depression, anxiety, substance use, among other behavior changes, after such events. This project will assemble a population-based sample that represents the pre-Katrina populations of the affected areas using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), longitudinal survey of a nationally representative sample of US families that began in 1968. With primary sponsorship from NSF for 34 waves of data collected on the same families and their descendents as of 2005, the PSID can justly be considered a cornerstone of the data infrastructure for empirically based social science research in the US.
The goal of the project is to track and locate families who are part of the longitudinal sample of the PSID in order to enhance the likelihood of their participation in the 2007 wave of the PSID. As these families represent approximately 7% (564 of 8041) of the total number of PSID families, their continued participation in the PSID is of critical importance for maintaining its response rate and representation of US families as a whole. Once the families are located they will complete a 40-minute questionnaire designed to assess exposures to Hurricane Katrina, its impact on a number of socio-economic and mental health outcomes, as well as examine the role played by socio-economic circumstances that existed prior to Katrina (as measured using PSID panel data) in shaping the impact of Katrina on these families. With many years of data collected on these families and their descendants prior to Katrina, this data collection takes advantage of the unique strengths of the PSID, but also contributes to enhancing and strengthening PSID data collection and analysis.
Carrying out the aims proposed here by collecting information from these Gulf state families who have participated in the PSID is advantageous for the following reasons. First, a high annual continuation rate is critical to the success of a long panel study such as the PSID. In recent waves, the study has achieved unprecedented wave-to-wave response rates in the range of 96-98%. However, with approximately 7% of the families (who provided interviews during the 2005 from their residences in the three Gulf States, it is very likely that an unusually high proportion may have relocated since Katrina. Locating these families in order to secure their participation in 2007 is of critical importance to maintaining the national representativeness of the sample and response rate.
Second, once the Gulf state families are successfully located, the administration of a questionnaire to the PSID Gulf state families takes advantage of the wealth of PSID data available on these families prior to the occurrence of Katrina. PSID has collected data from these same families and their descendants annually 1968-1997, and biennially ever since, with the most recent wave of data collection in 2005 (with virtually all of data collection completed prior to Katrina). The collection of one-wave of follow-up data on these Gulf state families will, then, create a longitudinal panel study, with information from prior waves brought into the resultant data files. These longitudinal data describing the pre- and post-Katrina world of these families could be used to develop rich analytic models that allow us to study how pre-existing socio-economic characteristics and functioning prior to Katrina may have affected the impact of Katrina, and the return to baseline functioning.
