Distribution of emergency relief in post hurricane mitch nicaragua

The Distribution of Emergency Relief in Post Hurricane Mitch Nicaragua by Catherine Ambler A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Economics Williams College Williamstown, Massachusetts May 9,2005 Abstract This thesis assesses the distribution of emergency relief in Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch. It describes the household and community characteristics that increased a household's probability of receiving aid in the first six months after the hurricane. In all cases analyses are broken down by three categories of aid-giver: the government, NGOs and international donors, and religious organizations. The thesis finds little evidence of systematic targeting towards the most vulnerable households. There were well-defined differences among the practices of the different aid-givers and a strong overall emphasis on region, particularly for rural areas. Aclcnowledgements In researching and writing this thesis I have accumulated debts to many people. On a personal note I would like to thank my friends for providing encouragement and distraction and my parents for their unconditional support and enthusiasm. I would like also to thank the many members of the Economics Department at Williams College from whom I solicited help and feedback. Honors coordinator Professor Ralph Bradburd and the Class of 2005 honors students deserve a special mention. I owe special gratitude to two faculty members who guided me in my work: Professor Alan de Brauw led me to this topic, got me started, and provided technical assistance and substantive feedback throughout the process; and, finally, my advisor, Professor Anand Swamy, has tirelessly offered ideas, advice, reassurance, and prompt responses to more emails than I (and I'm sure he) would care to count. Table of Contents 1. Introduction 1.1 Hurricane Mitch and Nicaragua 1.2 Natural Disasters in Developing Countries 2. Describing the Dataset 2.1 The Dataset 2.2 Variable Description 2.3 Summary Statistics 3. Regression Analysis 3.1 Household Models 3.2 Geographic Models 4. Conclusion CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The promises of billions of dollars in international money for emergency relief and reconstruction in the wake of the staggering human and material costs of the tsunami that devastated coastal areas of Indonesia, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand in late December 2004 provides a stark example of the importance of effective responses to natural disasters. Notwithstanding the continued vulnerability of developing countries to natural disasters, the literature on the economic impacts of such disasters is remarkably sparse and focuses mainly on institutional mechanisms for the management and reduction of risk. Very little scholarly work has been done on the allocation and effectiveness of the emergency relief money that flows into affected countries in the aftermath of a disaster. Yet no level of risk mitigation in the affected region could have effectively prepared people to cope with the effects of such a powerful disaster as the East Asian Tsunami. Emergency relief is an essential component of the recovery process, and the question of whether or not aid is reaching those who are most vulnerable is crucial to the development of affected countries. Thus, economic studies of the distribution and impact of disaster relief are potentially extremely important for the development of future policies and strategies. This thesis examines the targeting of emergency relief in Nicaragua in the six months following the impact of Hurricane Mitch in October and November of 1999. The poor countries of Central America have long been some of the most vulnerable countries in the world; their small populations have repeatedly been subjected to hurricanes, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Before the tsunami Hurricane Mitch had been the worst natural disaster in recent memory. Almost 3,000 people were killed in Nicaragua alone (PAHO 1998) and damage estimates for the country topped $1.5 billion (Lane 2000). Emergency relief was substantial. OECD countries sent $105.7 million in just bilateral emergency assistance in 1999, only one of many sources of money to Central America in that year (OECD 2004). However, evidence of government corruption during the relief process and a lack of preparedness and coordination among other aid organizations indicate that a systematic analysis of where that aid went is important. This thesis is based on data from the Encuesta de Hogares sobre Medicidn de Nivel de Vida (EMNV), a livings standard survey supported by the World Bank LSMS program. A full survey was taken in 1998 just before the hurricane, and a more limited survey of only affected areas was taken six months after Mitch in 1999. Combining household characteristics from EMNV98 and responses to questions about the hurricane and receipt of emergency relief from EMNV99, I investigate the extent to which poverty, the level of damage suffered from the hurricane, and a variety of other household characteristics affected the probability that a household received emergency aid. This study is the first empirical investigation of the Hurricane Mitch relief effort in Nicaragua. It contributes to the general literature by expanding on previous work in two ways. In my analysis of which households were more likely to receive aid I control for community, recognizing that some households would be more or less liltely to receive aid simply because of where they were located. I take this geographic analysis further by also examining which regions of the country were most targeted and what characteristics of communities affected a household's probability of receiving aid. Throughout the thesis I also break aid receipts down by aid-giver to analyze the distinct targeting patterns of the three main categories ofaid-giver: the government, NGOs and international donors, and religious organizations. The rest of this chapter describes the hurricane and relevant political and economic conditions in Nicaragua, as well as providing a general background to natural disasters in developing countries. Chapter describes the data set and reports summary statistics. Chapter describes my regression models and discusses their results. Chapter concludes. 1.1: Hurricane Mitch and Nicaragua From October 22 to November 2, 1998 Central America was besieged by the deadliest hunicane in living memory and one of the three deadliest in modem history.' The storm began as an ordinary tropical depression, one of many that are identified and named by National Hurricane Center in Miami every year. Most eventually lose strength and fade away long before they ever hit land, but Mitch persisted. On October 24 it was classified as a full blown hurricane with winds of up to 90 miles per hour. Despite still being many miles out at sea Mitch's fierce winds claimed their first seven casualties in Costa Rica. The hurricane changed course several times; first Cuba and Jamaica and then Belize and Mexico braced themselves for the impact. But on October 26, with its winds now reaching a monstrous 180 miles per hour, an unrelated high pressure system in the atmosphere interacted with Mitch and left it idling off the Honduran coast for three days, devastating the island of Guanaja and causing intense rainfall across the rest of the region. Unless otherwise noted the information in these paragraphs is taken from the New York Times article When Nature Rages by James C. McKinley Jr., November 9, 1998 Beginning on October 29 Mitch moved inland and, despite being downgraded to a tropical storm, it roamed across Honduras, dunlping huge amounts of water wherever it went. Floods and mudslides wiped out entire villages. In five days as much rain fell over Honduras as usually falls over the course of an entire year. The heaviest rains moved into northern Nicaragua, and on October 30 the department of Chinandega in the Pacific region of the country experienced the wrath of Mitch at its greatest intensity. The remarltable rainfall of that day, combined with five days of already heavy rain, proved to be too much. The crater lalte of the Casitas volcano collapsed, causing a mudslide of mammoth proportions. An estimated 14 villages were covered in mud. As Mitch lost steam it moved up through Guatemala and El Salvador before fizzling out as it entered Mexico. The aftermath of the hurricane was gloomy. Official death figures for the region range from 9,000 to 11,000 (Charvkriat 2000), and almost 3,000 people died in Nicaragua alone; almost a thousand more were unaccounted for (Pan American Health Organization [PAHO] 1998). 567,752 were listed as injured and 36,368 more as affected (Sistema de la Integration Centroamericana 1999 from Lane 2000). And human losses were only one part of the story. Nicaragua's already poor infrastructure did not stand up well against the power of the hurricane. More than 250,000 homes were affected and 870,000 people were displaced (approximately one fifth of the population). 500 schools and 300 health centers were damaged or disrupted and 25 percent of the transportation system was severely affected; almost 60 bridges were "partially or totally damaged" (International Monetary Fund 1999). Agricultural effects include the loss of one third of the 1998-99 banana crop and over half of the expected tobacco yields for that period (Foreign Agriculture Service 1999).~Productive agricultural assets such as livestock were also destroyed in many cases. Estimates from the government of Nicaragua put total hurricane damages at $1.5 billion-6 percent of the country's gross domestic product (Lane 2000). In the November 8, 1998 Boston Globe article "Storm sweeps away the gains of a decade in Central America" David Marcus and Richard Chacon highlight the problems of development left by the Mitch catastrophe. Though agriculture had been growing at an average annual rate of 3.2 percent since 1987, for farmers like the featured Herman Pasillos, who lost half of his 17 acre field, those gains meant nothing in the days after Mitch. Pasillos still had to feed the eleven members of his family. The article comments, "Pasillos' problem will be the country's dilemma: How you start over when you have almost nothing?" The political situation of Nicaragua Civil war, dictatorship, and U.S. intervention have plagued the recent history of Nicaragua. The U.S. backed Somoza family held dictatorial power for much of the mid twentieth century, but their dynasty collapsed in 1979 when it was deposed by the Sandinistas, a socialist party that solidified its power with elections in 1984. The Sandinistas attempted to implement socialist reforms but rising civil war intensified by the illegal American support of the Contra rebel group thwarted many of their political plans. An agreement was finally reached to hold democratic elections in 1990. Violeta Chamorro, the candidate of a coalition of 14 opposition parties, was elected president and served for seven years, ending the civil war and stabilizing the economy with market reforms. She was succeeded by Arnoldo Alemiin, another member of the anti-Sandinista More information available at h~://www.fas.usda.govipecad2/articles/99-03/nicaragua.htm, political coalition, who was president in 1998 when Hurricane Mitch hit. Shortly after he left office in 2002 Aleman was arrested on coi-ruption charges including money laundering, embezzlement, and electoral crime. In 2003 he was sentenced to a 20 year prison sentence. Though the new Nicaraguan government had been relatively stable, it had also been permeated by corruption, raising questions as to how much a president like Aleman could be trusted to carry out a relief effort that was transparent and honest. Reports in La Prensa, an independent daily newspaper in Managua, highlight the widespread fears of corruption during that time. Large international NGOs such as Oxfam International attributed delays in the reconstruction process specifically to corruption in the Alernan administration. Similar concerns were voiced at the May 1999 co~lsultativegroup meeting in Stockholm held to review the reconstruction process. Although Aleman returned from the meeting with the promise of $1.3 billion in aid from the international community, that aid was conditional on total transparency, to be achieved through incountry supervision of the relief process by the donating countries. The Boston Globe reported that many people were comparing the Aleman government to that of the Somozas, which stole millions in aid money after a 1972 earthquake. These considerable criticisms of the Aleman administration, both internal and external, are good reason to suspect that the distribution of aid was far from politically blind. The economic situation in Nicaragua Decades of civil war, dictatorship, and foreign dependence have left Nicaragua a very poor country. Consistently rated with Haiti as one of the two poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, purchasing power parity GDP per capita was only $2,300 in Table 15: Geographic regressions Pooravg aidall aidgov aidngo aidchurch 0.2509 (0.1786) 0.2808"" (0.1 105) 0.2032" (0.1072) -0.0678 (0.1366) 0.0429 (0.1 170) 0.0050 (0.0808) -0.0500 (0.0729) foodall foodgov foodngo foodchurch 0.0130 (0.2019) -0.0903 (0.1024) -0.0022 (0.0746) -0.1868" (0.1027) 0.0865 (0.1293) 0.1286" (0.0688) -0.1550** (0.0628) damageavg communityavg Religionavg pooravg damageavg communityavg Religionavg - 0.3237*** (0.1 152) Note: Coefficients for department dummy variables and household level control variables are not reported. Robust standard errors are clustered by municipio. Standard errors are in parentheses. Significance levels: *at lo%, **at 5%, ***at 1% In the aidgov specification the coefficient on the poor percentage was found to be significant and positive. An increase from to in the proportion of poor people in a municipio (&om no poor households to all poor households) resulted in a 28 percent increase in the liltelihood of a household receiving aid. In other words, a household in a community that was 25 percent poor was about 13 percent less likely to receive aid from the government than a household in a community that was 75 percent poor. This is evidence that the overall allocation of aid by the government was directed in something of a benevolent manner. Although the government was not successful in targeting the poor within communities, living in a poorer municipio increased the likelihood that a household would receive aid, indicating that the government, to some extent, did consider poverty when distributing aid. However, because of the evidence that within municipios the government was more likely to give aid to those with more social capital, it is not clear how ultimately beneficial this targeting of poorer communities was. The results for foodgov show that the variable for average number of households belonging to a community organization is significant and positive. An increase of in the average number of community organization memberships per household would have made a household in that community about 13 percent more likely to receive food aid. This suggests that the more politically active and organized a community was, the more likely they were to receive food aid. This finding, in that it is exclusive to food aid, maltes sense if one assumes that food aid is an immediate response, the very first thing needed after the hurricane. Then communities that were better organized politically would have had a better structure in place to respond to the crisis, maybe to lobby for aid from the government, and to make use of institutions that were already there, while less organized areas struggled to find leadership and make connections. This finding suggests that communities should work to become more politically active and organized as a method of better preparing for the immediate aftermath of the next disaster. The NGO case also yields several quite interesting findings. The coefficient on the poor percentage is positive and significant, though at .2 the effect is smaller than that for aidgov. An increase from to in the proportion of poor people in a municipio resulted in a 20 percent increase in the probability of a household in the municipio receiving aid from an NGO. A household in a municipio where three quarters of the households were poor was 10 percent more likely to receive aid than one in a municipio where one quarter of the households were poor. Although NGOs were not found to target poverty within communities, they, in the same way as the government, did target poorer communities. It is possible that because both NGOs and the government were working in areas where such large proportions of the population were poor it was simply too difficult to exclude those who were not poor. Such an approach, however, would still leave the poorest people in more affluent communities at a disadvantage. Surprisingly, the coefficient on the variable for the percentage of households experiencing housing damage within each municipio is both significant and negative, indicating that NGOs were actually targeting away from areas that experienced the greater effects of the hurricane. A home in a municipio where three quarters of the households had reported housing damage was about 15 percent less likely to receive aid than one in an area where only one quarter of the homes had reported damage. This result is especially puzzling in light of the fact that within municipios NGOs were found to target towards households reporting damage. A logical explanation for this finding is that the more damaged areas were also the least accessible, via destroyed roads and bridges, and it was simply difficult for NGOs to get to these areas to distribute aid. This is a common problem in disaster relief and one that can only be solved by obtaining the proper equipment, things like helicopters that are usually used in military efforts. If the NGOs did not have access to this equipment, they could have had trouble reaching some of the most affected and isolated areas. This does not, however, explain why the NGOs were the only group that appeared to have this problem. The main finding for foodngo is the significant and negative coefficient on the community organization average variable. Less politically organized and connected communities were more likely to receive food aid from NGOs and other international donors. An increase of one in the community average made a household in that community 15 percent less likely to receive food aid. It seems highly unlikely that NGOs consciously targeted these communities though it is possible that NGOs were already more Iiltely to be functioning in communities without a developed political structure before the hurricane and because of that their distribution of emergency food aid was concentrated in those areas. However, it seems implausible that this alone could account for such a strong effect. This finding is counterintuitive and somewhat inexplicable. I ran the regression for aidchurch and foodchurch with specifications that included alternately the community organizations average and a separate variable for proportion of households belonging to a religious organization. Because one would expect this religion average to be of particular importance for religious organizations and because this variable yielded a better fitting model, I present the results from this second specification. The damage average is significant and positive for aidchurch and foodchurch. Households in a municipio where three quarters of the houses were damaged were about 12 percent more likely to receive either aidchurch or foodchurch than a household in a municipio where only one quarter of the households reported damage. This is an interesting contrast to the negative results from the NGOs and suggests that religious organizations were better able to assess the needs of specific communities. This argument is supported by the previous evidence of regional targeting. Because the worst hurricane damage was spread across the Pacific and Central regions, organizations that specifically targeted the Pacific area neglected similarly damaged areas in other parts of the country. Churches were not shown to specifically target any particular region of the country; instead of focusing on broad areas, they focused on the condition of specific communities. This argument is somewhat qualified by the large significant coefficient on the proportion of households who were members of a religious organization in the foodchurch regression. A household in a community where three quarters of the households were members of a religious organization was about 16 percent more likely to receive foodchurch than a household in a community where one quarter of the households belonged to religious organizations. That this finding is specific to food aid suggests that in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane the aid operations of religious organizations were somewhat confined to the areas where they had been located prior to Mitch, but that with some time they were able to expand into other communities as well. The coefficient on the poor average for foodchurch is negative, suggesting that churches were less likely to provide food aid to households in poor communities than to households in more affluent communities. This finding is in direct contrast to the more robust finding from the household regressions that churches tended to target poor households within communities. It is possible that this finding is a result of churches tending to operate in places where they already were, but this interpretation would necessitate believing that religious organizations had been more concentrated in richer areas. Overall, though puzzling, this result is not extremely robust and should not mitigate the evidence &om the household regressions that churches targeted the poor. The results from the geographic regressions show that characteristics of surrounding households did, in some cases, affect a household's liltelihood of receiving aid. In fact, the government and NGOs were more effective in targeting vulnerable communities than they were in targeting vulnerable households within communities. However, findings like the negative coefficient on the damage average for NGOs also show that it is not always easy to reach out to those communities most in need. The idea of geographical targeting is important and it can be a cost-effective method of funneling aid to large numbers of needy households, but the targeting of poor communities cannot be a substitute for further examining the specific needs within that community. Neglecting to single out very poor households, single mothers, and children can result in increased inequality within a community and stunted development, making that community even more vulnerable to the next natural disaster. Targeting one community or region over another can also be problematic. The fact that the Pacific Rural region was the most targeted area of Nicaragua and that poverty rates rose in the similarly affected Central Rural region is a reminder of the consequences of targeting certain areas too heavily. CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION Despite the billions of dollars in emergency and rehabilitative relief that has been sent to developing countries after Hurricane Mitch, the East Asian tsunami, and other recent natural disasters, very little literature exists on how this aid has been allocated. This study is the only systematic analysis of the massive post Mitch relief effort in Nicaragua, and it reveals provocative answers to important questions about which households were able to benefit from the disbursement of emergency aid. I add to the scant disaster relief literature more generally by expanding on previous work in two ways: first by considering and controlling for geographical variations at all levels, and then by analyzing differences in the ways that separate categories of aid-givers distributed aid. Using two rounds of a living standards measurement survey conducted immediately before and six months after the impact of Mitch in late 1998, I investigate the distribution of emergency relief in areas affected by the hurricane, identifying regional and household characteristics that influenced the likelihood that a household would receive aid from each of three categories of aid-giver. The relief efforts of the Nicaraguan government were found to be consistent with independent evidence of widespread corruption and limited resources. Although some effort was made to target poorer communities there is no indication that any attempt was made to target poor and affected households within those communities. There is, however, strong evidence that governmental aid-givers favored those households that were well connected in the community, thereby nullifying much of the benefit that could have come through the targeting of poor areas. The weak Nicaraguan government was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the Mitch disaster; in the chaotic days and months following the hurricane there was simply no way to overcome the entrenched corruption that permeated all levels of government. This is compelling evidence that the governments of Nicaragua and other similarly disaster prone countries must be better prepared to respond to large natural disasters in a manner that is more efficient and transparent, allowing their citizens and the international community to see that aid money is going to those who need it most. Anecdotal evidence from NGOs operating in Nicaragua after Hurricane Mitch indicates that their aid efforts suffered from both a lack of coordination between independent agencies and a general level of unpreparedness. My study is consistent with this story, finding limited success amid altruistic intentions. Their greatest accomplishment was the targeting of the most affected households within communities; they were the only aid-giver to systematically consider housing damage in their aid decisions. NGOs were also shown to favor rural areas and poor communities, indicating that they were trying to go where the need was greatest. But they were never able to simultaneously target both the poor and the affected, and there is also evidence that they had trouble reaching the most affected communities. A possible explanation is that they did not always have access to the equipment needed to reach areas cut off by damaged roads and bridges. My results suggest that NGOs were making a concerted effort to target both the poor and the most affected, but that they were unsuccessful in translating their efforts into effective strategy. In Nicaragua the best intentions were no substitute for effective policy, and in the future NGOs must be more prepared to coordinate on the implementation of rigorous aid-delivery policy. The analysis of the aid-giving behavior of religious organizations reveals a robust tendency to target the poor within communities. Despite the fact that they were the only aid-giver to accomplish the critical goal of favoring the poor, their lack of attention to hurricane specific details like housing damage strongly suggests that religious organizations were not operating under a coherent strategy for disaster relief, and were instead simply extending status quo aid policy into an exceptional situation. Yet, evidence that they did target the most affected communities indicates that there was some effort to assess needs based upon the affects of the hurricane. This argument is strengthened by the fact that unlike the government and the NGOs religious organizations exhibited no broad regional targeting behavior, even to rural areas. Instead of simply favoring the areas with the most visible damage, in Nicaragua churches went where the need was greatest, regardless of region. This evidence shows that, in many ways, religious organizations were doing a better job than other aid-givers at singling out areas that needed help. Unfortunately, because they were so much less prolific than the government or NGOs the general usefulness of their efforts was limited. Perhaps the most important aspect of these results is not the differences among the separate aid-givers but the fact that they were different at all. Although the overall results show that both damage and well-being affected aid receipt, the story is, as I have indicated, much more complex than that. That these three broad categories, each one of them made up of hundreds of groups and independent actors, displayed such strong and different trends in the ways in which they distributed aid is persuasive evidence that these behaviors did not develop as an accident of nature, but that they were a result of the specific goals, circumstances, and resources of each type of aid-giver. Consequently, future planning of more efficient disaster relief efforts cannot focus on the overall picture, but must address the nuances of each aid-giver's situation. Similarly, future study of the results of these efforts must be as specific as possible, as insufficient targeting practices by individual groups can hide within broad overall trends. There are certain trends within my results however that are consistent enough across types of aid-giver to address in general terms. There is, for example, repeated evidence that food aid was less directly targeted than other kinds of emergency relief, indicating that food aid is in many ways a different creature than the other common types of donations. The need for food is presumably more immediate, and in the first days following a disaster like Mitch the distribution of food aid is essential to the survival of affected households, but there is not time for a detailed analysis of where the greatest needs lie. It is also more universal. Local conditions and destroyed infrastructure can impact the food sources of even those households that are otherwise relatively unaffected, rendering means tested food aid somewhat inefficient. In the immediate aftermath of a disaster the size of Mitch a less targeted distribution of food aid is an unavoidable and, perhaps, necessary reality. There is also a general pattern in my results that indicates that rural areas were heavily targeted in the aid distribution process. Though some of this effect is likely a result of damage specific to rural regions that I was unable to control for, another large part of it is assuredly due to a spillover effect in which less needy households were more likely to receive aid because they were in an area where aid was being heavily distributed. Of the rural areas, the Pacific Rural region was by far the most extensively targeted area of the country, despite similar rates of damage and greater poverty in the Central Rural region. This disparity was likely caused both by the highly visible effects of the Casitas volcano disaster in the Pacific Rural region and the region's proximity to the capital. The overinvestment in one region at the expense of another was problematic; poverty rates subsequently rose in the Central Rural region while falling in the Pacific Rural, a warning that policymakers should be careful not to support the rehabilitation of one region while risking the development of another. Overall, the most important component of the targeting of disaster relief in Nicaragua appears to have been geographic. In many ways geographic targeting is an effective strategy because it is logistically simpler and requires less of the detailed information that is often scarce in the aftermath of a large natural disaster. It is no accident that the most effective aid programs in Nicaragua were community based. Yet with a community based approach must come the understanding that it is the most vulnerable communities that should be targeted, and that these vulnerable communities will include some very poor places that have sustained only marginal damage. Such an approach must also entail a better understanding of needs within the targeted community, and the effective distribution of aid towards those who need it most. Both of these components of an effective strategy were, for the most part, absent during the Mitch relief effort in Nicaragua. The final story of aid distribution after Hurricane Mitch in Nicaragua is one of small successes among a larger collection of ineffective efforts. A general lack of coherent strategy is obvious and, consequently, the targeting of vulnerable households of all kinds was extremely limited. Aid-givers were simply unprepared for a disaster of Mitch's magnitude and their efforts were riddled with corruption, delays, and coordination problems, all contributing factors to the inefficient responses documented in this thesis. The intense devastation left by the East Asian tsunami reminds us that the governments of disaster prone developing countries and the international community must be better prepared to deal with large scale natural disasters. And they must be prepared in the right way, heeding the lessons of Mitch-fighting cooperation, and, above all, reaching out to those most at risk. corruption, promoting References Berke, Phillip R. and Timothy Beatley. 1997. After the Hurricane: Linking Recovery to Sustainable Development in the Caribbean. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Bradshaw, Sarah. 2002. Exploring the Gender Dimensions of Reconstruction Processes Post-Hurricane Mitch. Journal of International Development. 14: 87 1-879. Carter, Michael R. and Marco Castillo. 2004. Moral, Markets and Mutual Insurance: Using Economic Experiments to Study Recovery from Hurricane Mitch. Available at www.prism.gatcch.cdu/-mc338/ca1"cercastillo.pdf Charverait, Celine. 2000. 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[...]... understanding of the impact of the hurricane The fieldwork for EMNV99 was carried out in May and June of 1999 Households were included in the 1999 survey exclusively by virtue of having been included in the original 1998 survey and their presence in a hurricane affected area Efforts were made to find missing households within their original municipio Though EMNV99 cannot be said to be representative of hurricane. .. provide a sketch of some initial patterns in the distribution of emergency relief 2.1 : The Dataset In 1993, 1998, and 2001 Nicaragua carried out three rounds of a Living Standards Measurement Survey (LSMS) A more limited "post Mitch" survey was conducted in 1999 following the impact of Hurricane Mitch The Encuesta de Hogares sobre Medicidn de Nivel de Vida (EMNV) was designed by the Institute Nacional... beneficiaries of disaster aid is an important component of understanding why households experienced such different economic results in the wake of the hurricane Aid in Central America after Mitch Anecdotal evidence about the quality of the disaster relief effort in Central America after the hurricane is helpful in constructing a context for my empirical analysis of aid distribution in Nicaragua In the days... Consequently, emergency relief efforts generally suffer from an inability to determine effectively who needs aid and what kind ' Carter and Castillo (2004) find that in Honduran communities with high levels of trust and altruism the effects of Mitch were less drastic, while those in "social isolation" were less likely to recover of aid they need, as indeed seems to have been the case during the post Mitch emergency. .. storm like Mitch In 1998 in Latin America, for example, less than 37 percent of the total housing stock provided adequate protection against potential natural disasters (Charvkriat 2000) Less stringent environmental regulations that are the norm in the developing world often also contribute to the magnitude of the damage The effects of Hurricane Mitch are thought to have been more intense because of widespread... quintile lost 18 percent of their pre Mitch assets, compared to only 3 percent for households in the highest quintile They also find that short term (emergency) relief was inadequate for the amount of losses suffered The survey also collected information on the amount of disaster aid received, and in a second paper Morris and Quentin Wodon (2003) test both the targeting and allocation of disaster relief. .. disaster relief using the probability of receiving aid and the amount of aid received as their dependent variables They employ assets as their indicator of wellbeing, using both pre Mitch asset levels and asset losses due to the hurricane as explanatory variables in their regressions Their analysis of aid allocation suggests that the amount of emergency relief did not fluctuate according to need Instead, aid... did not vary according to how much a household lost This is unsurprising given that emergency relief most often comes in the form of food, clothes, medicine, and other necessities that are hard to vary across households In the next step of their analysis, employing a model that hypothesizes that the receipt of aid depends both on pre Mitch well-being and loss of well-being due to Mitch, Moris and Wodon... result of a continual lack of coordination and timing among the various actors (Red Cross 2000) The International Red Cross, one of the largest distributors of aid, admitted that its efforts were hampered by its failure to coordinate relief contributions and the late arrival of much of its staff and basic supplies (Hiscoclc 2005) The aid was mostly supply driven, meaning that instead of indicating to... The impact of a natural disaster on a household can represent a major economic shock through the reduction of income and destruction of assets Coping mechanisms include cutting expenditures, increasing the time devoted to work, borrowing against future earnings, drawing on remaining assets or insurance, help from friends and family, and disaster aid (Carter and Castillo 2004) However, all of these strategies . The Distribution of Emergency Relief in Post Hurricane Mitch Nicaragua by Catherine Ambler A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts. CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION The promises of billions of dollars in international money for emergency relief and reconstruction in the wake of the staggering human and material costs of the tsunami. emergency relief in Nicaragua in the six months following the impact of Hurricane Mitch in October and November of 1999. The poor countries of Central America have long been some of the most vulnerable