Benefiting from Disaster?: Public and Private Responses to the Wenchuan Earthquake

Albert Park and Sangui Wang

No 11684, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We provide the first household survey-based evidence on the impact of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake on the welfare of rural households. Asset and income losses were substantial, especially in seriously affected areas. Our main finding is that there was an overwhelming government response to the disaster. Subsidies provided to households in 2008 were so large that mean income per capita was 17.5% higher in 2008 than in 2007 and the poverty rate actually declined from 34% to 19%. Using distance from the epicenter as an instrument for earthquake damage, we find a strong positive statistical relationship between lost value of housing and other assets due to the earthquake and increases in income per capita and government transfers received, and much weaker responsiveness of private transfers, wage labor supply, and borrowing.

Keywords: Earthquake; disaster; poverty; china (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP11684 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: Benefiting From Disaster? Public and Private Responses to the Wenchuan Earthquake (2017)
Working Paper: Benefiting from Disaster?: Public and Private Responses to the Wenchuan Earthquake (2016)
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:cpr:ceprdp:11684

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP11684

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().