The effect of the Wenchuan earthquake and government aid on rural households

This chapter discusses the impact of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake on household income, consumption, and income inequality using a unique dataset collected in rural Sichuan. We find that household income fell by 14 percent because of the earthquake and that income inequality did not increase. With reg...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Feng, Shuaizhang, Lu, Jingliang, Nolen, Patrick, Wang, Lei
Format: Book Chapter
Language:Inglés
Published: International Food Policy Research Institute 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10568/148413
Description
Summary:This chapter discusses the impact of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake on household income, consumption, and income inequality using a unique dataset collected in rural Sichuan. We find that household income fell by 14 percent because of the earthquake and that income inequality did not increase. With regard to government support, living subsidies were more than enough to offset losses in annual income, but reconstruction aid, such as grants and bank loans for housing, accounted for less than 60 percent of total house-rebuilding costs.