Earthquakes and the intergenerational delegation of responsibility

Do earthquakes affect parents’ preferences for raising responsible children? By merging data on random variations in the frequency and timing of earthquakes with five waves of the World Values Survey from 1995 to 2022 at the district level across 90 countries, our event-specific difference-in-differences estimates reveal that parents affected by moderate earthquakes increase their preference for responsible children by 5.9 percentage points due to perceived risks. We argue that moderate shocks heighten risk perceptions without depleting parental capacity, whereas strong earthquakes dampen this effect by reducing the capacity required to instill responsibility. Our empirical evidence suggests that governments should embed child-centred disaster risk reduction frameworks within post-disaster recovery strategies to enhance long-term disaster resilience.