Benefiting From Disaster? Public and Private Responses to the Wenchuan Earthquake

Albert Park and Sangui Wang

World Development, 2017, vol. 94, issue C, 38-50

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: natural disaster; public response; poverty alleviation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X16305903
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Benefiting from Disaster?: Public and Private Responses to the Wenchuan Earthquake (2016)
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:eee:wdevel:v:94:y:2017:i:c:p:38-50

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2016.12.038

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().