Adult Mortality Five Years after a Natural Disaster: Evidence from the Indian Ocean Tsunami

Jessica Y. Ho, Elizabeth Frankenberg, Cecep Sumantri and Duncan Thomas

No 22317, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Exposure to extreme events has been hypothesized to affect subsequent mortality because of mortality selection and scarring effects of the event itself. We examine survival at and in the five years after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami for a population-representative sample of residents of Aceh, Indonesia who were differentially exposed to the disaster. For this population, the dynamics of selection and scarring are a complex function of the degree of tsunami impact in the community, the nature of individual exposures, age at exposure, and gender. Among individuals from tsunami-affected communities we find evidence for positive mortality selection among older individuals, with stronger effects for males than for females, and that this selection dominates any scarring impact of stressful exposures that elevate mortality. Among individuals from other communities, where mortality selection does not play a role, there is evidence of scarring with property loss associated with elevated mortality risks in the five years after the disaster among adults age 50 or older at the time of the disaster.

JEL-codes: I10 J10 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env, nep-hea and nep-lab
Note: AG DEV EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published as Jessica Y. Ho & Elizabeth Frankenberg & Cecep Sumantri & Duncan Thomas, 2017. "Adult Mortality Five Years after a Natural Disaster," Population and Development Review, vol 43(3), pages 467-490.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22317.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:22317

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w22317

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().