Futaba social capital and health survey 2016

1. About Futaba

Futaba is a town in Fukushima Prefecture, located within 2 to 10 km of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, where the nuclear accident occurred following the Great East Japan Earthquake. While the tsunami and earthquake seriously damaged some areas of Futaba, the nuclear fallout had the biggest impact. Since most areas in Futaba remain under a government-mandated evacuation order, residents are forbidden from returning to their homes. Therefore, Futaba residents have continued to be evacuated to other parts of Japan for more than 8 years. Iwasaki, Sawada, and Aldrich (2017) report unusually high level of stress among Futaba residents following the long evacuation period.  For overall data description, see:

•  Keiko Iwasaki, Yasuyuki Sawada, and Daniel Aldrich (2017), “Social capital as a shield against anxiety among displaced residents from Fukushima”, Natural Hazards, published online, pages 1–17.

•  Keiko Iwasaki, Myoung-jae Lee, and Yasuyuki Sawada, "Verifying Reference-Dependent Utility and Loss Aversion with Fukushima Nuclear-Disaster Natural Experiment," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies Volume 52, June 2019, Pages 78-89.

2. Purpose of the survey

 To capture the Futaba residents’ health status and living environment for policy improvement

 3. Overview of the survey

(1) Target: All the household heads of Futaba who are evacuating to all over Japan. (Due to practical constraints, we only addressed our survey forms to household heads. According to the Population Census of 2010 and 2015, Futaba had around 6,900 residents and 2,600 households before the disaster in 2010, and about 6,600 residents and 2,300 households as of 2015.

(2) When:  Distributed in July 2019

(3) How:   With the support of the Futaba town office, we sent survey questionnaires to around 3,000 addresses listed as regular recipients of the town newsletter by post.

(4) Response rate: 17%: 499/3,000  (The actual response rate would be higher than 17% because the 3,000 addresses include duplications of both registered addresses of household heads and those who requested the newsletter.)

4. Main Variables included in the survey

(1) Basic information

age, sex, current living place (city and area), pre-disaster living area in Futaba

(2) Disaster effect

Officially certified house damage by the Great East Japan Earthquake, current income, pre-disaster income, current house type, pre-disaster house type

(3) Health

            K6 (Kessler et al. 2002)

(4) Other 

Time preference measures, social capital measures

5. IRB approval

 This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Tokyo (16–35).

6. Data availability

 Data (without personal ID/information) and questionnaire will be accessible only for academic (replication) purposes upon a written request to the project leader, Yasuyuki Sawada (sawada@e.u-tokyo.ac.jp).

7. Project member

Project leader: Yasuyuki Sawada (Professor, University of Tokyo)

Project member: Keiko Iwasaki (Researcher, NLI Research Institute) 

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平成25年12月 

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