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

Albert Park and Sangui Wang
Additional contact information
Sangui Wang: Department of Economics, Remin University

No 2016-36, HKUST IEMS Working Paper Series from HKUST Institute for Emerging Market Studies

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: wenchuan earthquake; disaster; public response; private response; household survey; earthquake; housing; government transfers (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 40 pages
Date: 2016-06, Revised 2016-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://iems.ust.hk/assets/publications/working-papers-2016/iemswp2016-36.pdf First version, 2015 (application/pdf)

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:hku:wpaper:201636

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in HKUST IEMS Working Paper Series from HKUST Institute for Emerging Market Studies Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Carla Chan ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).