IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/rdevec/v29y2025i1p435-449.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The impact of a disaster recovery policy on health status of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake victims: Evidence from a natural experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Qiong Huang
  • Gautam Bhandari
  • Ghulam Dastgir Khan
  • Yuichiro Yoshida

Abstract

The 2015 Gorkha earthquake destroyed key infrastructure in Greater Kathmandu and the surrounding earthquake‐affected areas, undermining the health status of affected households. As one of the disaster recovery policies, the Nepalese government distributed taxi permits to severely affected households through a lottery. Leveraging on this natural experimental setting, we examine the impact of the policy on their health status and access to health services. The results show that the treated households have fewer chronic and diarrhoeal diseases, and fewer doctor visits. However, we find no significant difference in the households' medical expenditure between the two groups. We also find that rural households with the taxi permits benefit more from the policy. The results of this study may provide policymakers with some insight to enhance their post‐disaster recovery strategy.

Suggested Citation

  • Qiong Huang & Gautam Bhandari & Ghulam Dastgir Khan & Yuichiro Yoshida, 2025. "The impact of a disaster recovery policy on health status of the 2015 Gorkha earthquake victims: Evidence from a natural experiment," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(1), pages 435-449, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:29:y:2025:i:1:p:435-449
    DOI: 10.1111/rode.13136
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/rode.13136
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/rode.13136?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:rdevec:v:29:y:2025:i:1:p:435-449. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1363-6669 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.