Download This PaperDecentralized Provision of Disaster Aid: Aid Fragmentation and the Poverty Implications
49 Pages Posted: 21 May 2020 Last revised: 24 Aug 2021
Date Written: April 21, 2020
Abstract
Despite large-scale humanitarian aid, the headcount poverty rate continued to rise after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia. Drawing on the unique survey that tracks households over seven years, this paper examines the causes of prolonged poverty and inequality. Donor fragmentation and the weakness in monitoring the quality of in-kind aid created sizable long-term
welfare costs on the recipients. While local elite capture distorts the intra-village allocation, quantile regression found that spatial unevenness in available aid, with heterogeneous quality, had a persistent negative distributional impact on the lives of the poor.
Keywords: Decentralization, Donor Competition, Disaster Aid, Governance
JEL Classification: H84, H40, O12, Q54
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