Breakup and Economic Circumstances of New Orleans Households Four Years after Hurricane Katrina

Michael S. Rendall, RAND Corporation

Although it is widely believed that pre-existing social inequalities are amplified by disasters, our understanding of the roles of families and households in mediating this process is poorly understood. Because extended-family households are often formed and maintained for resource sharing and functional assistance, their intactness is of special interest. The breakup of households from a pilot and follow-up full survey that traces the outcomes respectively 1 and 4 years on for members of a probably-sample of pre-Katrina New Orleans households is compared to the breakup of households in a national sample over an equivalent period. Breakup of extended-family New Orleans households following Katrina was more than two times higher than for the national sample after one year. Its impact was amplified by the 50 percent higher prevalence of extended-family households in pre-Katrina New Orleans than nationally, and by the high concentration of poor extended-family households in New Orleans’ African-American population.