A Population Perspective on the Beneficiaries of Public and Private Assistance Immediately and over the Long-term After a Major Disaster

Natural disasters undermine economic development, destroying lives, livelihoods, the built and natural environment. Public assistance programs follow, but knowledge of their reach, impact and evolution is limited. We address this gap, analyzing population-representative longitudinal survey data collected in Indonesia before and for two decades after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which was followed by a large recovery program involving multiple major actors. Those who lived, at the time of the tsunami, in communities that were badly damaged, were far more likely to receive aid and received larger amounts than residents of other areas immediately after the tsunami. Those gaps were small and insignificant four years post-tsunami. Conditional on exposure, individual attributes also shaped receipt which reached the vulnerable, particularly poor and female-headed households. Housing assistance, distributed several years post-tsunami to those who lost homes, was critical in the eyes of recipients, playing a key role as they rebuilt livelihoods.