{"id":6987,"date":"2018-09-28T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/?p=6987"},"modified":"2018-09-28T08:40:45","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T13:40:45","slug":"natural-disasters-worsen-racial-inequality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2018\/09\/28\/natural-disasters-worsen-racial-inequality\/","title":{"rendered":"Natural Disasters Worsen Racial Inequality"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo of two houses in flooded area. Photo by Mary, Flickr CC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The National Weather Service estimates that Hurricane Florence dropped over <\/span>8 trillion gallons<\/span><\/a> of rain across North Carolina, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has <\/span>just started evaluating how much damage was done<\/span><\/a>. While Hurricane Florence and other natural disasters impact thousands of lives every year, not all groups recover equally. Recent research reported by <\/span>Mic<\/span><\/a><\/em> reveals that non-white households tend to lose wealth after a natural disaster, while white households often profit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tracking families from 1999 to 2013, sociologists <\/span>Junia Howell<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>Jim Elliot<\/span><\/a> found that white families in the most disaster-hit counties gained $126,000 in wealth on average over the 14 years of the study. By contrast, Back, Latinx, and Asian families in the same counties lost $27,000, $29,000 and $10,000 respectively. \u201cPut another way, whites accumulate more wealth after natural disasters while residents of color accumulate less,\u201d Elliot explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

After a natural disaster, FEMA provides grants and low-interest loans to offset the cost of property damage. While it would make sense that federal disaster relief would mitigate racial disparity, Howell and Elliot\u2019s research shows that it actually makes it worse. Counties receiving the most FEMA aid experienced the starkest widening of the racial wealth gap. Black families in counties that received the least FEMA aid accumulated $82,000 <\/span>more<\/span><\/i> wealth on average than Black families in counties that received the most aid. The researchers tried to explain this puzzling finding:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBased on previous work on disasters such as hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, we know FEMA aid is not equitably distributed across communities \u2026 When certain areas receive more redevelopment aid and those neighborhoods also are primarily white, racial inequality is going to be amplified.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, one potential explanation for this trend is that white communities within counties receiving federal aid tend to receive more investment for rebuilding after a disaster than non-white communities in the same county. And w<\/span>ith climate change increasing the frequency and intensity of natural disasters, this discovery implies worsening racial wealth gaps in the future. However, Howell and Elliot see reason to be hopeful,<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe good news is that if we develop more equitable approaches to disaster recover, we can not only better tackle that problem but also help build a more just and resilient society.\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The National Weather Service estimates that Hurricane Florence dropped over 8 trillion gallons of rain across North Carolina, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has just started evaluating how much damage was done. While Hurricane Florence and other natural disasters impact thousands of lives every year, not all groups recover equally. Recent research reported […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,85,14],"tags":[29,126,123,105659,41889,97016,39110,277,16858,39115,39111,4225,19021,358,19085,3694],"class_list":["post-6987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inequality","category-politics","category-race","tag-class","tag-disaster","tag-ethnicity","tag-federal-aid","tag-fema","tag-hurricane","tag-inequality","tag-natural-disaster","tag-neighborhood","tag-politics","tag-race","tag-racial-inequality","tag-socioeconomic-status","tag-wealth","tag-wealth-gap","tag-wealth-inequality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6987"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6990,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987\/revisions\/6990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}