The Impact of a Natural Disaster on Individuals’ Health-Related Behaviors in China

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the impact of natural disasters on 3 individuals’ health-related behaviours: drinking, sleeping and smoking. We estimate this impact by comparing the health-related behaviours between individuals who were and were not living in the provinces that were affected by the 2011 summer floods in China. We study this effect by using data drawn from the China Health and Nutrition Survey(CHNS) in 2009 and 2011 while restricting individuals’ from the age of 18 to 75. We find that individuals living in the affected provinces tend to strongly engage in less sleep time, mainly driven by those living in rural areas. We also find individuals tended to decrease their cigarette consumption marginally overall, but women tended to increase their cigarette consumption after the floods. Furthermore, the floods had no significant effect on drinking behaviour for the overall sample.