Influence of social institutions on disaster recovery outcomes following Hurricane Katrina

Social capital plays an important role in post-disaster recovery outcomes. The multidimensionality of social capital results in a complexity of measurement.  Social institutions provide a unique opportunity to quantify social capital as they allow community members to interact with each other to build trust and act collectively.  This study extends the work of Stolle (1998) and Roman (2004) by creating a social institutions measure that includes a broad range of social institution types, utilizes publicly available point data on social institutions across the entire United States, and adds a dimension of institutional diversity.  The influence of social institutions, such as civic, religious, and educational institutions, on disaster recovery outcomes in the Gulf Coast Child and Family Health Study will be explored.  Using business pattern data from the Dun and Bradstreet Million Dollar Database, we geocoded 63,947 social institutions in ArcGIS 10.2.  A factor analytic approach reduced the 68 types of social institutions to seven factors. A measure of social institutional quantity and diversity at the neighborhood level was developed using an additive model.  This presentation will describe the social institutional make-up of the communities where a cohort of 844 families heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina reside five years post-disaster.  The impact of quantity and diversity of social institutions in the community and perceived disaster recovery as well as socio-ecological recovery, assessed by respondent physical and mental health, social role adaptation, and housing and financial stability, is performed. Social institutions may present an important opportunity for increasing community resilience to disasters.