Many natural hazards affect the United States each year including geological and meteorological processes, both causing billions of dollars in damage and killing many people. Between 1950 and 1994 there were over 4,115 deaths and 70,063 injuries due to tornado related fatalities in the United States. This study is investigating how tornado touchdowns might have affected the demographic trends in the areas that experience devastating tornadoes. This study considers all the United States counties that have had tornadoes from 1990 to 1998.
Using cross tabulation, the distribution of frequencies among various categories between demographic variables and tornado damage variables will be calculated. This process of cross tabulation is followed by applying the Chi-square analysis to find if the results of cross tabulation indicate the existence of a strong enough relationship
between the two variables being cross tabulated. This will establish whether the observed frequency values for all the cells deviate significantly from the corresponding expected frequency values of those cells. These methods test if the demographic and economic factors are associated with or independent of the minimum and maximum damage category.
After testing each set of variables, it was found that all variables that were compared to the maximum tornado damage category have a significant difference between the observed and expected values. This would indicate that there is an association between the economic/demographic variables and the maximum tornado damage variables. Concluding, it is possible that the tornado damage category has had an affect on the changes in population, white population, median household income, median gross rent, median value, mobile home, persons living alone and unemployment. However, it is more likely that outside factors have influenced these socio-economic variables.