Crosscurrents in Flood Planning and Insurance Discounts: What Drives Action?

The federal government created the Community Rating System (CRS) in 1990 to encourage local flood management. County and municipal governments can join the program to reduce flooding risk and enable residents to access discounts for flood insurance. We ask What is driving CRS program participation across counties over time? Analyzing three decades of panel data on county CRS uptake, we find overall low program uptake among counties with a floodplain (17 percent). More resourced counties, indicated by greater population and higher resident incomes, were 3 percent and 84 percent more likely to join the program, respectively, suggesting that lower-resource counties may need more support to implement CRS and similar programs. Counter to the growing partisanship in environmental policymaking, political party affiliation is not significantly associated with county CRS participation, suggesting that flood adaptation may cut across party lines in ways that current climate policy often does not.