A few days ago I was listening to podcast that briefly mentioned the inequalities of disaster relief. The podcast made me remember how I felt two years ago reading about the slow response and lack of funding for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico compared to Hurricane Harvey. I remember talking to my father about the injustice of the situation. However, I never really thought about how disaster relief might reinforce inequalities within smaller communities. I never considered the disparities between homeowners and renters, hourly wage earners and salaried employees, or how disasters affect people of different races in different ways.
I started searching the internet for more information, and I found a sociological research article called “Damages Done: The Longitudinal Impacts on Natural Hazards on Wealth Inequality in the United States” written by Junia Howell and James R. Elliot. This research article examined damage data and concluded “that natural hazard damages and how relief is provided afterward exacerbate the growing gap between white and black wealth” (Howell and Elliot). In this blog post, I will take a closer look at the work of Junia Howell and James R. Elliot in an attempt to gain a better understanding of what our country can learn from the data of disaster relief.
The rapid effects of climate change have resulted in record breaking storms all over the United States. In “Damages Done: The Longitudinal Impacts on Natural Hazards on Wealth Inequality in the United States” Howell and Elliot found that as local hazard damages increase, wealth inequality also increases. The researchers talk about how the majority of research conducted on natural hazards are qualitative and utilize a case study approach. In this study, the researchers instead used a qualitative approach. They developed a longitudinal population-centered study approach linking a sample of adults in the United States to information on local damages attributed directly to natural hazards. The researchers then examined the ways race, education, and homeownership interacted with the effects of local hazzard damage.
The approach the researchers used required them to track and cross compare data on the wealth of nearly 3,500 families, county-level natural hazard damages, FEMA aid, neighborhood socioeconomic factors, and county size for every U.S. county from 1999 to 2013. They used data from a geocoded Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), Spatial Hazard Events and Losses Database for the United States, FEMA, and data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
The use of secondary data required the researchers to make minor adjustments so that the data would better fit their model – like adjusting for inflation and adjusting wealth upward by the global minimum to ensure that there wasn’t any negative values. The researchers also decided to limit their sample to all adult females (one per household) “present in the PSID from 1999 to 2013 who participated in at least four of the seven interview waves”. In the past I have been concerned that the use of secondary data offeres the potential for a researcher to be biased in their interpretation. Researchers have the discretion to decide what is “relevant” to their study and could manipulate the data in ways that fit their model, when in reality the model should be changed. However, I beileve that Howell and Elliot did an effective job analysing their robust data set, and provided good justifications for their data and sampling choices.
Model 7 of Table 2 and Model 5 of Table 4 in Howell, Junia and James R. Elliott. 2018. “Damage Done: The Longitudinal Impacts of Natural Hazards on Wealth Polarization in the United States.” Social Problems. DOI: 10.1093/socpro/spy016.
The map above shows the the cumulative property damage caused by natural hazards in each county from 1999 to 2013. The two graphs below the map display the predicted wealth accumulation attributable to natural hazards for white people and black people. The model simulated wealth accumulation over time for white and black respondents by creating a net of average accumulation from 1999-2013, and held “starting wealth in 1999, educational attainment, age, nativity, marital status, number of children, homeownership, residential mobility, annual insurance premiums paid, neighborhood socioeconomic status, and county population and index of urban development constant at their means”. The model was complex, but the results were clear. Even when everything else is equal, white people accumulate more wealth after a disaster and black people lose wealth.
Today, climate change is rapidly worsening and natural disasters are expected to rise exponentially. The findings from Howell and Elliott’s study illusrate the ways in which federal aid is failing those who could need it the most. Natural disasters give us enough to worry about without the fear of deeping inequality. As a country, we need to address the findings from this study and reevaluate the way federal aid is administered after a disaster.
Works Cited:
Junia Howell, James R Elliott; Damages Done: The Longitudinal Impacts of Natural Hazards on Wealth Inequality in the United States, Social Problems, , spy016
Data/Society/Decision-making Spring 2019 