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- Title
The Chicago Fire of 1871: a bottom-up approach to disaster relief.
- Authors
Skarbek, Emily
- Abstract
Can bottom-up relief efforts lead to recovery after disasters? Conventional wisdom and contemporary public policy suggest that major crises require centralized authority to provide disaster relief goods. Using a novel set of comprehensive donation and expenditure data collected from archival records, this paper examines a bottom-up relief effort following one of the most devastating natural disasters of the nineteenth century: the Chicago Fire of 1871. Findings show that while there was no central government relief agency present, individuals, businesses, corporate entities and municipal governments were able to finance the relief effort though donations. The Chicago Relief and Aid Society, a voluntary association of agents with a stake in relief outcomes, leveraged organizational assets and constitutional rules to administer aid.
- Subjects
DISASTER relief research; GREAT Fire, Chicago, Ill., 1871; EMERGENCY management; CHARITABLE giving; FIRES -- Social aspects; HISTORY of Chicago (Ill.); NINETEENTH century; ECONOMICS
- Publication
Public Choice, 2014, Vol 160, Issue 1/2, p155
- ISSN
0048-5829
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s11127-014-0175-1