Despite the tremendous destruction wrought by catastrophes, social science holds few quantitative assessments of explanations for the rate of recovery. This article illuminates four factors - damage, population density, human capital, and economic capital - thought to explain the variation in...

Despite the tremendous destruction wrought by disasters and catastrophes around the world, we have few quantitative assessments of potential explanations for the rate of post-disaster recovery. This article lays out five hypotheses explaining variation in the pace of population recovery...