Observational analysis shows faster productivity recovery after hurricanes in counties with high church membership, indicating that religious social capital fosters economic resilience.
This paper investigates the critical role of church membership in the process of economic recovery after high-impact natural disasters. We document a significant adverse treatment effect of the 2005 hurricane season in the Southeastern United States on establishment-level productivity. However, we find that establishments in counties with higher rates of church membership saw a significantly stronger recovery in terms of productivity for 2005–10. We also show that church membership is correlated with post-disaster entrepreneurship activities and population growth.
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Hasan et al. (2024) studied this question.
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