Do remittances make poor households more resistant to ‘natural disasters’? Evidence from the 2015 earthquake in Nepal
Do remittances make poor households more resistant to ‘natural disasters’? Evidence from the 2015 earthquake in Nepal
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2015 年尼泊尔地震的证据表明，汇款是否能增强贫困家庭抵御“自然灾害”的能力？
DOI：
10.1016/j.ijdrr.2022.102858
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发表时间：
2022
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Rayamajhi Santosh
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Sato Takeshi;Tachibana Towa;Sakurai Takeshi;Rayamajhi Santosh
尽管许多研究发现人均GDP与自然冲击造成的损害之间存在负相关，但有证据表明，这种负相关在低收入国家中并不明显。通过利用尼泊尔农村地区的详细家庭调查数据，我们调查了主要通过汇款增加的家庭收入是否减轻了2015年毁灭性地震对房屋造成的破坏。我们证实，汇款与使用混凝土的房屋结构呈正相关。然而，我们的分析并没有表明，与研究地区常用的砖石房屋相比，使用混凝土的房屋在2015年显示出抵抗地震的强度。我们的估计进一步表明，那些收到更多汇款的住户所拥有的房屋更容易受到2015年地震的影响。我们认为，汇款削弱房屋对地震冲击的最可能的因素是较少的维护和小修理的汇款依赖型住房。例如，依赖汇款的保健所往往缺少从事维修工作的适龄男性工人。我们的研究结果表明，使用现代建筑材料与汇款并不一定有助于HHS抵御自然的冲击。
Although many studies have found negative associations between GDP per capita and damage caused by nature's shocks, evidence suggests that this negative association is obscure among low-income countries. By utilizing detailed household (HH) survey data from rural areas of Nepal, we investigated whether rising HH incomes, mainly through remittances, mitigated the damages caused by the 2015 devastating earthquake to houses. We confirmed that remittances were positively associated with house structures using concrete. Our analyses, however, did not show that houses using concrete displayed strength against the seismic shocks in 2015 compared with the masonry houses that were commonly used in the study areas. Our estimates further indicated that those HHs receiving more remittances maintained houses that were more vulnerable to the 2015 earthquake. We consider that the most likely factor by which remittances weakened houses against the seismic shocks are less maintenance and minor repairs in the remittance-dependent HHs. For example, remittance-dependent HHs tend to suffer from the shortage of working-age male workers needed for maintenance work. Our results suggest that using modern construction materials with remittances does not necessarily help HHs withstand nature's shocks.