Patricia A. Bolton

Abstract

This dissertation is a case study of family recovery following a major earthquake in Managua, Nicaragua, in December 1972. Following a review of the literature on post-disaster family behavior and the long-term effects of disasters, a theoretical model of the family recovery process is proposed. It was hypothesized that the subjective perception of being recovered would depend on recovery of objectively measured dimensions of employment continuity, income recovery, and recovery of dwelling size and conveniences, and further that both subjective and objective recovery would depend on the family's pre-disaster socioeconomic status, on the extent of the disaster's impact on the family, and on post-disaster recovery assistance. Two types of assistance are conceptualized, A variable labeled Aid measures the receipt of post-disaster assistance typically found to be received from kin, friends, and formal agencies after disasters. In view of the traditionally particularistic definition of role relationships in Latin America, a second measure of assistance was conceptualized, Access to Favors. It is a measure of the variability among families of potential personalistic ties to persons with greater resources or wider spheres of influence, with this access provided through the head of household's work setting.

Using a panel design, a survey of families was done to collect data on recovery seven months and seventeen months after the earthquake. The initial sample, drawn with a multistage cluster design, consisted of 340 Managuan families who had been displaced from their homes for a month or more following the earthquake. Two hundred seventy-five families were interviewed in both waves of the survey.

The analysis uses multiple regression techniques, with the causal assumptions of the recovery model tested by path analytic procedures to estimate the relative strength of the exogenous variables in the model on each of the measures of objective recovery, and of all the independent variables in the model on the dependent variable labeled Perception of Recovery. Thirty-one percent of the variance in Perception of Recovery is explained. The comparison of the path coefficients in the theoretical model indicates that Perception of Recovery is best explained for these data by Continuity of Employment for the head of household; Continuity of Employment is best explained by the variable Access to Favors. The order of the linkage of these two variables to Perception of Recovery is interpreted as evidence of the strength and stability of sociocultural patterns and processes in the aftermath of the disaster, and not as a social process peculiar to the post-disaster situation.

The broader theoretical implication is that post-disaster recovery processes probably reflect existent sociocultural mechanisms for securing and distributing resources for the maintenance and improvement of one's status in the social structure. In Managua, mechanisms for distributing resources are conventionally highly personalistic. The importance of the Access to Favors variable in the recovery process, implied by the findings in this study, appears in this particular Latin American setting to take the place of—and perhaps be the cultural equivalent of—more formalized and universalistic processes for distributing aid to families which are typical following major disasters in the United States. The practical implication is: attempts to combine traditional distribution mechanisms with mechanisms inconsistent with a specific sociocultural setting are likely to cause varying degrees of misunderstanding and organizational difficulty. The greater relative importance of Continuity of Employment over income and housing recovery, in explaining Perception of Recovery, also suggests the type of programs which might have been most helpful to families following the Managua earthquake.

Ph.D. in Sociology
University of Colorado Boulder
1979

Committee Members

Robert M. Hunter
Blane E. Mercer
E. Merle Adams
Herbert Bynder
Thomas S. Saarinen