The Local Governments' Cost of Disaster Response for the Tokyo Inland Earthquake(in Japanese)

Recently, the damage estimations for the anticipated Tokyo Inland Earthquake released by the Center of Disaster Management Council assumed extensive damage, including a death toll of approximately 11,000 people, the collapse of 850,000 buildings, and a maximum economic loss of 112 trillion yen in the event of a severe earthquake in the northern part of Tokyo Bay. While much research in the past has focused on estimating the cost of socioeconomic rehabilitation and reconstruction resulting from an extremely severe earthquake, the issue of cost breakdown and revenue loss at local government level has never been addressed. This paper estimates the cost of disaster emergency response, rehabilitation, and reconstruction from the Tokyo Inland Earthquake based on data from the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake, and concludes that (1) the local governments' effective cost for disaster response for the Tokyo Inland Earthquake is 24.3 trillion yen, which includes the cost credited to the local government bond (12.6 trillion yen) and general account budget (11.7 trillion yen), (2) the burden of recovery and reconstruction cost is extremely large for the Tokyo metropolitan government as compared to other local governments, (3) the effective recovery cost for the local governments is at its highest (further increases?) three to four years after the occurrence of the Tokyo Inland Earthquake.