The Impact of Earthquake on Demographic Trends: L’Aquila’s Case.

Elena Ambrosetti, Sapienza Università di Roma
Francesca Licari, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Sara Miccoli , Sapienza University of Rome
Cecilia Reynaud, Università Roma Tre

The wide literature on the role played by environmental disasters in shaping population movements analyses mostly less-developed countries. Differently this paper investigates the demographic changes resulting from the earthquake occurred in the context of a developed country: particularly the population and migration dynamics in the municipalities affected by the so-called L'Aquila earthquake in 2009. The first aim of the paper is to study demographic changes, in the populations of the municipalities hit by the L'Aquila earthquake. The second aim is to describe the migration system and to understand how it has been influenced by the pre-existent vulnerabilities. We consider the different contribution of Nationals and non-Nationals to the changes of migratory system. In the analyses we take into account the main demographic and socio-economic trends in the earthquake’s area. Relying on ISTAT data on population and international/ internal migration in Italy, we offer a general model of how environmental disaster might affect population and migratory system. Main changes in population growth and migration inflows and outflows are analysed for the period before and after the earthquake.

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 Presented in Session P3. Poster Session Migration, Economics, Environment, Methods, History and Policy