Poverty and Disasters in the United States A Review of Recent.pdfVIP

Natural Hazards 32: 89–110, 2004. 89 © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. Poverty and Disasters in the United States: A Review of Recent Sociological Findings ALICE FOTHERGILL1 and LORI A. PEEK2 1Department of Sociology, University of Vermont; 2 Department of Sociology, University of Colorado, 327 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0327, U.S.A.; Author for correspondence (e-mail: lori.peek@colorado.edu) (Received 15 October 2002; accepted in final form 30 April 2003) Abstract. This article synthesizes the literature on poverty and disasters in the United States and presents the results from a wide range of studies conducted over the past twenty years. The findings are organized into eight categories based on the stages of a disaster event. The review illustrates how people of different socioeconomic statuses perceive, prepare for, and respond to natural hazard risks, how low-income populations may be differentially impacted, both physically and psychologically, and how disaster effects vary by social class during the periods of emergency response, recovery, and reconstruction. The literature illustrates that the poor in the United States are more vulnerable to natural disasters due to such factors as place and type of residence, building construction, and social exclusion. The results have important implications for social equity and recommendations for future research and policy implementation are offered. Key words: natural disasters, poverty, social equity, socioeconomic status, United States 1. Introduction Natural disasters have often been overlooked as a site of social stratification be- cause they were viewed as indiscriminate “acts of God” that affected communities randomly. In fact, due to this notion of randomness, disasters were believed to be “status levelers” or events that democratized the social