Lori M. Hunter's research while affiliated with University of Colorado Boulder and other places
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Publications (97)
Rural America is often portrayed as a distressed and left-behind place, where the outlook for rural children is stagnant. This view of rural hardship is supported by the fact that since 1980, almost one in three rural communities have seen increases in poverty of 50 percent or more. But are such worsening conditions a typical feature of rural commu...
A 2011 Foresight report by the UK Government Office for Science introduced and raised questions and concerns about trapped populations. Conceptualized as consisting of actors who are highly vulnerable to climate and environmental stressors given limited resources (economic, social), trapped populations lack the capacity to adapt to these stressors...
Rural-urban classifications are essential for analyzing geographic, demographic, environmental, and social processes across the rural-urban continuum. Most existing classifications are, however, only available at relatively aggregated spatial scales, such as at the county scale in the United States. The absence of rurality or urbanness measures at...
As with all social processes, human migration is a dynamic process that requires regular theoretical reflection. This article offers such reflection as related to the role of the natural environment in contemporary migration research and theory. A growing body of evidence suggests that environmental contexts, as shifting social and ecological reali...
Rural America is often portrayed as a distressed and left-behind place, where the outlook for rural children is stagnant. This view of rural hardship is supported by the fact that since 1980, almost one in three rural communities have seen increases in poverty of 50 percent or more. But are such worsening conditions a typical feature of rural commu...
Linking people and places is essential for population-health-environment research. Yet, this data integration requires geographic coding such that information reflecting individuals or households can appropriately be connected with characteristics of their proximate environments. However, offering access to such geocoding greatly increases the risk...
Rural-urban classifications are essential for analyzing geographic, demographic, environmental, or socioeconomic processes across the rural-urban continuum. However, existing county-level classifications may ignore the within-county variations of rurality, which can be problematic if the scale of interest is at the place-level or finer. Moreover, e...
Climate change and attendant weather events are global phenomena with wide-ranging implications for migration and health. We argue that while these issues are inherently interrelated, little empirical or policy attention has been given to the three-way nexus between climate vulnerability, migration, and health. In this Review, we develop a conceptu...
Land-based income streams, which include the consumption and selling of crops, livestock and environmental products, are inherent in rural households’ livelihoods. However, the off-farm cash income stream – primarily composed of migrant labour remittances, social grants, and savings and loans – is increasing in importance in many regions. This case...
The county scale has thus far dominated rural demographic research—this descriptive profile of small town America is unique with its place-based lens. Another important extension is the nationwide application of the Community Capitals Framework which builds on the body of research examining capitals within case studies focused on one or more commun...
Garrett Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons put forward underdeveloped arguments that continue to be reflected in simplistic debates about the drivers and implications of demographic dynamics. It’s time to embrace the complexity that Hardin lacked in order to develop better-informed policy.
Rural livelihoods in developing countries are disproportionately vulnerable to multiple shocks and stresses that exacerbate vulnerability, which can result in increased dependence on natural resources. Several studies have been conducted on the safety net role of natural resources, which lower the impact of negative shocks on rural livelihoods. How...
Previous research has linked increasing climate-change-related variability to Mexico-US migration, but only under particular climatic/social conditions and periods of high irregular migration. Using the 2000 and 2010 Mexican censuses, we examine this environment-migration nexus across a broader set of socioecological contexts and during periods of...
Migrants from Mexico to the U.S. tend to be healthier than non-migrants in their origin – part of a pattern termed the “healthy migrant effect”. With climate change altering livelihoods across the globe, we ask how the migration-health connection may be altered by environmental strain. On the one hand, positive health selectivity may be intensified...
Scholarly understanding of human migration’s environmental dimensions has greatly advanced in the past several years, motivated in large part by public and policy dialogue around “climate migrants”. The research presented here advances current demographic scholarship both through its substantive interpretations and conclusions, as well as its metho...
Scholarly understanding of human migration's environmental dimensions has greatly advanced in the past several years, motivated in large part by public and policy dialogue around "climate migrants". The research presented here advances current demographic scholarship both through its substantive interpretations and conclusions, as well as its metho...
Migration provides a strategy for rural Mexican households to cope with, or adapt to, weather events and climatic variability. Yet prior studies on environmental migration in this context have not examined the differences between choices of internal (domestic) or international movement. In addition, much of the prior work relied on very coarse spat...
Evidence is increasing that climate change and variability may influence human migration patterns. However, there is less agreement regarding the type of migration streams most strongly impacted. This study tests whether climate change more strongly impacted international compared to domestic migration from rural Mexico during 1986–99. We employ ei...
Motivated by growing public and policy concerns with the social implications of climate change, this chapter reviews theory and research on the environmental dimensions of human migration. Recent research on migration-environment connections employs a variety of methods including time series analysis to capture the dynamic nature of migrant flows,...
In the face of climate change-induced economic uncertainties, households may employ migration as an adaptation strategy to diversify their livelihood portfolio through remittances. However, it is unclear whether such climate-related migration will be documented or undocumented. In this study we combined detailed migration histories with daily tempe...
Between 2005 and 2010, 6.3 million migrants (approximately 6% of the population) moved domestically within Mexico. These shifts have potential implications for exposure to natural disasters. To examine this relationship, we use census microdata in conjunction with information on natural disaster events. The populations exposed to extreme weather ev...
Increasing rates of climate migration may be of economic and national concern to sending and destination countries. It has been argued that social networks—the ties connecting an origin and destination—may operate as “migration corridors” with the potential to strongly facilitate climate change-related migration. This study investigates whether soc...
Studies investigating migration as a response to climate variability have largely focused on rural locations to the exclusion of urban areas. This lack of urban focus is unfortunate given the sheer numbers of urban residents and continuing high levels of urbanization. To begin filling this empirical gap, this study investigates climate change impac...
Climate change adaptation involves major global and societal challenges such as finding adequate and equitable adaptation funding and integrating adaptation and development programs. Current funding is insufficient. Debates between the Global North and South center on how best to allocate the financial burdens associated with adaptation programs. H...
A lthough wild natural resources are a standard dietary component in southern Africa, little information exists on these resources' specific role in the maintenance of household food security among HIV-impacted households. In this context, the influence of cash savings or income generated through use or sale of natural resources (e.g., using fuelwo...
Men and women's vulnerability to disasters is different and often related, in part, to cultural norms that influence gendered behaviors and abilities. In this study we focus on gender differences in swimming abilities, which in the case of tsunamis have resulted in far greater female mortality rates. We present results on swimming ability by gender...
While the last two decades have seen important theoretical, empirical, and policy advancements in environmental justice generally, much remains to be done regarding Native Americans. Unique political and cultural dynamics shape the study and pursuit of environmental justice (EJ) in Native American communities. This review summarizes Native American...
Research on the environmental dimensions of human migration has made important strides in recent years. However, findings have been spread across multiple disciplines with wide-ranging methodologies and limited theoretical development. This article reviews key findings of the field and identifies future directions for sociological research. We cont...
Socio-demographic data are typically collected at various levels of aggregation, leading to the modifiable areal unit problem. Spatial non-stationarity of statistical associations between variables further influences the demographic analyses. This study investigates the implications of these two phenomena within the context of migration-environment...
In recent years, the empirical literature linking environmental factors and human migration has grown rapidly and gained increasing visibility among scholars and the policy community. Still, this body of research uses a wide range of methodological approaches for assessing environment–migration relationships. Without comparable data and measures ac...
Rural households across the globe engage in both migration and natural resource use as components of livelihood strategies designed to meet household needs. Yet, migration scholars have only recently begun to regularly integrate environmental factors into empirical modelling efforts. To examine the migration-environment association in rural South A...
Recurring food crises endanger the livelihoods of millions of households in developing countries around the globe. Owing to the importance of this issue, we explored recent changes in food security between the years 2004 and 2010 in a rural district in Northeastern South Africa. Our study window spans the time of the 2008 global food crisis and all...
Demographers have much to contribute to climate change science. This paper describes a new framework being developed by the climate research community that holds potential as an organizing tool for population-climate scholarship, as well as being useful for identifying demographic research gaps within the climate change field. The shared socio-econ...
The number of people living in wildfire-prone wildland–urban interface (WUI) communities is on the rise. However, no prior study has investigated wildfire-induced residential relocation from WUI areas after a major fire event. To provide insight into the association between sociodemographic and sociopsychological characteristics and
wildfire-relate...
In many rural regions of developing countries, natural resource dependency means changes in climate patterns hold tremendous potential to impact livelihoods. When environmentally-based livelihood options are constrained, migration can become an important adaptive strategy. Using data from the Mexican Migration Project, we model U.S. emigration from...
Accurate measurement of household food security is essential to generate adequate information on the proportion of households experiencing food insecurity, especially in areas or regions vulnerable to food shortages and famine. This manuscript offers a methodological examination of three commonly used indicators of household food security - experie...
Environmental and climatic changes have shaped human mobility for thousands of years and research on the migration-environment connection has proliferated in the past several years. Even so, little work has focused on Latin America or on international movement. Given rural Mexico's dependency on primary sector activities involving various natural r...
The long-standing and sometimes heated debates over the direction and size of the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on environmental concern contrast post-materialist and affluence arguments, suggesting a positive relationship in high-income nations, with counter arguments for a negative or near zero relationship. A diffusion-of-innovations appr...
Background: Although natural resources play a central role in rural livelihoods across the globe, little research has explored the relationship between migration and natural capital use, particularly in combination with other livelihood capitals (i.e., human, social, financial and physical).
Objective: Grounded in the rural livelihood framework, th...
Background:
Although natural resources play a central role in rural livelihoods across the globe, little research has explored the relationship between migration and natural capital use, particularly in combination with other livelihood capitals (i.e., human, social, financial and physical).
Objective:
Grounded in the rural livelihood framework,...
Migration-environment models tend to be aspatial within chosen study regions, although associations between temporary outmigration and environmental explanatory variables likely vary across the study space. This research extends current approaches by developing migration models considering spatial non-stationarity and temporal variation - through e...
This research offers an examination of environmental attitudes, concern, and behaviors among individuals presently living
within the context producing contemporary American environmental awareness, but who originated from contexts socially, environmentally,
and economically distinct. More specifically, data from the 1993 environmental module of the...
Local natural resources are central to rural livelihoods across much of the developing world. Such "natural capital" represents one of several types of assets available to households as they craft livelihood strategies. In order to explore the potential for environmental scarcity and change to contribute to perpetuation of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we...
HIV/AIDS has been described as a household shock distinct from others faced by rural households. This study examines this characterisation by analysing the impact of an adult HIV/AIDS-related death on household food security, compared with households experiencing either no mortality or a sudden non-HIV/AIDS adult death. The research is based in the...
There is little empirical evidence on the association between household experience with HIV/AIDS and shifts in the use of natural resources in developing countries, where residents of rural regions remain highly dependent on often-declining local supplies of natural resources. This study examines household strategies with regard to fuelwood and wat...
The state of the local environment shapes the well-being of millions of rural residents in developing nations. Still, we know little of these individuals' environmental perceptions. This study analyzes survey data collected in an impoverished, rural region in northeast South Africa, to understand the factors that shape concern with local environmen...
Migration is one of the variety of ways by which human populations adapt to environmental changes. The study of migration in the context of anthropogenic climate change is often approached using the concept of vulnerability and its key functional elements: exposure, system sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. This article explores the interaction of...
OBJECTIVE: Balancing environmental quality with economic growth in less developed settings is clearly a challenge. Still surprisingly little empirical evidence has been brought to bear on the relative priority given environmental and socioeconomic issues among the residents themselves of such settings. This research explores such perceptions. METHO...
Abstract During the 1970s and 1980s, social scientists focused considerable attention on patterns of community change in boomtowns affected by large-scale energy resource development in the western United States. The resulting literature has provided inconsistent and relatively inconclusive evidence about the extent of various forms of social disru...
The HIV/AIDS pandemic has had dramatic influence on the demographic dynamics of many of the world's less economically developed regions. Today, an estimated 33 million individuals are living with HIV, and recent data suggest that, every day, over 6800 persons become HIV-infected and over 5700 persons die from AIDS (UNAIDS 2006). The age profile of...
This paper reviews and synthesizes findings from scholarly work on linkages among rural household demographics, livelihoods and the environment. Using the livelihood approach as an organizing framework, we examine evidence on the multiple pathways linking environmental variables and the following demographic variables: fertility, migration, morbidi...
There is currently a lack of research on the association between demographic dynamics and household use of natural resources in rural Africa. Such work is important because in rural Africa natural resources buffer households against shocks, offering both sustenance and income-generating potential.
The article focuses on adult mortality as a househo...
OBJECTIVE: A widely noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to yield only low-wage service-sector employment for long-term residents, while raising local costs of living. This research examines change in socioeconomic status during the 1990s for long-term residents of high-amenity, high-growth rural counties in th...
The past decade has brought substantial transition to South Africa. The introduction of democracy in 1994 has yielded important political and socioeconomic transformations affecting millions of people. Here, we explore the impact of institutional and structural changes on the availability and management of fuelwood, a key natural resource in rural...
In many developing regions, women and young girls spend several hours daily in the collection of natural resources. Still the link between these household resource strategies and stakeholder perceptions of development priorities remains unexplored. This project examines this association with survey data representative of the adult population from G...
Religion has been shown to influence attitudes toward an array of social issues. This manuscript focuses specifically on environmental issues, with empirical examination of the distinctiveness of contemporary Mormon environmental perspectives as contrasted with the general U.S. population. A belief in the importance of dominion over the environment...
Population growth in rural areas characterized by high levels of natural amenities has recently received substantial research attention. A noted concern with amenity-driven rural population growth is its potential to raise local costs-of-living while yielding only low-wage service sector employment for long-term residents. The work presented here e...
Losses due to natural hazards (e.g., earthquakes, hurricanes) and technological hazards (e.g., nuclear waste facilities, chemical spills) are both on the rise. One response to hazard-related losses is migration, with this paper offering a review of research examining the association between migration and environmental hazards. Using examples from b...
As communities continue to engage in debate surrounding land use and preservation, insight into stakeholder knowledge and concern with local species becomes increasingly important. This project explores the association between individual knowledge/concern with species diversity as related to environmental perspective, measured through the New Ecolo...
Abstract Rural communities are increasingly being faced with the prospect of accepting facilities characterized as “opportunity-threat,” such as facilities that generate, treat, store, or otherwise dispose of hazardous wastes. Such facilities may offer economic gains through jobs and tax revenue, although they may also act as environmental “disame...
The values that individuals associate with wildlife and biodiversity are many. This study explores the values associated with wildlife and biodiversity by residents of a small, rural community in the Intermountain West region of the United States. The community is located within an area rich in wildlife and, in general, the research aims to examine...
Objective. This article presents a cross-national examination of gender variations in environmental behaviors. Research on environmental concern reveals modest distinctions between men and women, with women typically displaying higher levels of environmental concern and behavioral adjustments relative to men. Additionally, some prior research sugge...
There are at least two gaps in the literature on culture regions: (1) little research on regions other than the South, and (2) a lack of examination of regional distinctiveness across time. In addition, existing research provides contradictory conclusions regarding the perpetuation of culture regions; some results suggest modernization forces are o...
This study contributes to our understanding of the association between internal migration patterns and environmentally hazardous facilities, with a focus upon race-specific outmigration at the county-level, nationwide. Among research suggesting inequalities with regard to the social distribution of environmental risk, selective migration is often i...
There are at least two gaps in the literature on culture regions: (1) little research on regions other than the South, and (2) a lack of examination of regional distinctiveness across time. In addition, existing research provides contradictory conclusions regarding the perpetuation of culture regions; some results suggest modernization forces are o...
Demographic and land use dynamics have important implications for the natural environment within both developed and developing nations. Within the context of developed nations, popular and policy debates surrounding contemporary patterns of suburbanization attest to the salience of demographic and development issues. We examine the implications of...
Abstract Although much research on rural “boomtowns” explores differences between rapid-growth communities and more stable communities, it is logical to consider that residents within rural boomtowns experience community transitions in different ways. We examine a specific outcome, fear of crime, across three categories of community residents with...
During the 1970s and 1980s, social scientists focused considerable attention on patterns of community change in boomtowns affected by large-scale energy resource development in the western United States. The resulting literature has provided inconsistent and relatively inconclusive evidence about the extent of various forms of social disruption cau...
Several studies undertaken over the past decade suggest that minority and lower-income communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards relative to the rest of the U.S. population, resulting in an issue of “environmental equity.” This research examines the equity issue in relation to the foreign born in the United States, making...
Several studies undertaken over the past decade suggest that minority and lower-income communities are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards relative to the rest of the U.S. population, resulting in an issue of "environmental equity." This research examines the equity issue in relation to the foreign born in the United States, making...