Evaulating Regional Recovery based on Demographic Charateristics of Affected Areas

-Case Study of the 1995 Kobe Earthquake, the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetu Earthquake-

Abstract

In a demographically mature society, more attention is required to address the demographic transition in a context of disaster recovery. This study applied the 1995 Kobe Earthquake and the 2004 Niigata-ken Chuetsu Earthquake to examine the population recovery and the demographic characteristics (sustainable, dependent and marginal) of the affected areas. The result yielded clearly that “sustainable regions” are easier to have better population recovery due to the consistent young emigrants. The “dependent regions” hardly complete the population recovery without public support or private fund. Few dependent regions in mountainous areas might even transfer into marginal regions within the decline in working age population. It concluded that the demographic characteristic can be regarded as an essential factor of social resilience which is intensively associated with disaster recovery.