Much research has demonstrated that vulnerable people fare more poorly than non vulnerable ones in disasters and crises across a variety of outcomes – including mental and physical health, disaster aid received, re-housing processes, and overall satisfaction with recovery. But little is known about how natural disasters change the social and political environment for those vulnerable groups. Some have argued that natural disasters raise the consciousness of civil society and decision makers so that conditions improve for vulnerable groups, while others believe that disasters have little or even negative impact on their status in society. This paper uses a new panel dataset across 17 years (1999 through 2015) of Japan’s 47 prefectures to investigate how disasters impact discrimination rates for vulnerable groups, including women, the elderly, foreigners, and those with disabilities. Controlling for demographic and social factors we find that disasters actually reduce discrimination against certain vulnerable groups - especially women and the elderly - while having no measurable impact on discrimination against other groups - foreigners and the disabled. These results bring with them important policy recommendations for local residents, disaster managers, and decision makers.

Much research has underscored the critical nature of social capital during crises. Yet we have less information on how social ties interact with vulnerability factors such as age and socioeconomic status to influence mortality of the most vulnerable. Using a new, micro-level dataset of all 550 inundated neighborhoods from nearly 40 cities, towns, and villages across Japan’s Tohoku region, we analyze the factors that influenced mortality during the 11 March 2011 tsunami at the community level. Controlling for factors thought important in past studies - including geographic administrative, and demographic conditions - we find that social capital interacts with age and socioeconomic status to strongly correlate with mortality. For the elderly and those with lower socioeconomic status, ceteris paribus, deeper reservoirs of social capital are linked with lower levels of mortality. These findings bring with them important policy implications for disaster managers, communities, and decision makers facing the crisis.

This article asks why states adopt comprehensive national disaster laws. Rather than treating legislation as an automatic response to hazard exposure, we conceptualize disaster-law adoption as a process of structural resonance: regional diffusion pressures become consequential when they align with domestic governance needs and administrative capacity. Using a new country-year dataset of first adoptions across 204 states and territories from 1960 to 2025, we estimate Cox proportional hazards models with multiple imputation. Recent hazard exposure predicts adoption only in simpler specifications and loses significance once diffusion and state-structure variables are introduced. Regional adoption share strongly accelerates first adoption. Decentralization and government accountability are also associated with earlier enactment, and regional diffusion is amplified in more decentralized polities. The findings show that disaster legalization is not simply a functional response to risk. It is a sociological process in which external legal templates gain force where domestic authority is fragmented and the demand for administrative coordination is high.