Long-Term Trend in the Association Between Disaster Damage and Happiness Before and After the Great East Japan Earthquake

Objectives: Disasters change survivors' living circumstances, which can affect their happiness. We examined the trends in the association between disaster damage and happiness before and after a disaster.Methods: We analyzed 4,044 participants aged >= 65 years who had experienced the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. The baseline survey was conducted 7 months before the disaster. Follow-up surveys have been conducted every 3 years. Using a mixed model for repeated measures, we compared the prevalence ratios (PRs) for unhappiness according to the survivors' level of housing damage, which is a proxy for disaster damage.Results: The unhappiness in participants who suffered severe damage appeared to be higher than in those with no damage in 2010 (multivariate-adjusted PR: 1.18, 95% confidence interval: 0.93-1.48). A higher PR was observed after the earthquake in 2013 (1.34, 0.79-2.28), while there was no difference in 2016 (1.02, 0.53-1.97) and 2019 (1.03, 0.50-2.12).Conclusion: The prevalence of unhappiness in survivors with severe housing damage was higher before the disaster. However, the unhappiness gap between people with and without housing damage converged during the follow-up.

Automated summary

This study aimed to explore the association between disaster damage and happiness, as well as the changes before and after a disaster. The results showed that survivors with severe housing damage had lower levels of happiness before the disaster, but the gap in unhappiness between those with and without housing damage converged during the follow-up.