Social Protection during Disasters: Evidence from the Wenchuan Earthquake

Xiaojiang Hu, Miguel A. Salazar, Qiang Zhang, Qibin Lu and Xiulan Zhang

IDS Bulletin, 2010, vol. 41, issue 4, 107-115

Abstract: Using evidence from the Wenchuan earthquake (12 May 2008) in China, this article examines the impact of disaster on the functioning of China's social protection system. The article examines the social protection system and the recipients of social protection. It presents four main findings: (1) the impact of the disaster on the social protection system itself was considerable; (2) the system was able to cope fairly successfully with the enormous demands created by the earthquake by a surge of resource utilisation; (3) there was an alarming rate of burnout and possible degradation in capabilities after several months, which may affect the effectiveness of the reconstruction stage, and (4) the demands of the public for perfect equality of treatment has hindered targeting of resources, but also simplified the operation at the relief stage. The article concludes with tentative proposals as to the nature of the institutional resilience expressed in the surge.

Date: 2010
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/idsb.2010.41.issue-4

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:wly:idsxxx:v:41:y:2010:i:4:p:107-115

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in IDS Bulletin from Blackwell Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().