TY - JOUR AU - Ho, Jessica Y AU - Frankenberg, Elizabeth AU - Sumantri, Cecep AU - Thomas, Duncan TI - Adult Mortality Five Years after a Natural Disaster: Evidence from the Indian Ocean Tsunami JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 22317 PY - 2016 Y2 - June 2016 DO - 10.3386/w22317 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22317 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w22317.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Jessica Y. Ho 417 Chapel Drive Department of Sociology Box 90088 Duke University Durham, NC 27708-0088 E-Mail: jessica.y.ho@usc.edu Elizabeth Frankenberg University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Carolina Population Center 123 W Franklin St. Chapel Hill, NC 27599-8120 E-Mail: e.frankenberg@unc.edu Cecep Sumantri SurveyMETER E-Mail: sumantri.2002@gmail.com Duncan Thomas Department of Economics Duke University Box 90097 Durham, NC 27708 Tel: 919/660-1803 Fax: 919/684-8974 E-Mail: d.thomas@duke.edu AB - Exposure to extreme events has been hypothesized to affect subsequent mortality because of mortality selection and scarring effects of the event itself. We examine survival at and in the five years after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami for a population-representative sample of residents of Aceh, Indonesia who were differentially exposed to the disaster. For this population, the dynamics of selection and scarring are a complex function of the degree of tsunami impact in the community, the nature of individual exposures, age at exposure, and gender. Among individuals from tsunami-affected communities we find evidence for positive mortality selection among older individuals, with stronger effects for males than for females, and that this selection dominates any scarring impact of stressful exposures that elevate mortality. Among individuals from other communities, where mortality selection does not play a role, there is evidence of scarring with property loss associated with elevated mortality risks in the five years after the disaster among adults age 50 or older at the time of the disaster. ER -