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The degradation of non-market relationships has rendered individuals unnecessarily vulnerable in disasters, including the global pandemic. While local networks of community-based aid that emerge in response to disasters improve the efficacy of response, they tend to be short-lived. This is unfortunate, since the existence and strength of such local networks prior to the onset of disasters not only boosts the efficacy of response but also contributes to the well-being of individuals and communities in non-disaster times. Therefore, individuals ought to establish and strengthen fair-weather local networks of non-market relationships—that is, cultivate neighbor relationships.

The Protestant ethic has been depicted as declining in America between 1870 and 1930, due to new consumer durables and less rewarding work. This study finds that the Protestant ethic did not so much decline as become transformed. The work ethic remained in force, while frugality weakened. This transformation is traced to three dynamic social forces: degradation in the quality of work due to industrialization, the decline of community with urbanization, and a dramatic increase in inequality. Consequently, social respect and social standing came increasingly to be sought through consumption, which became a proxy for hard work, entailing a weakening of asceticism.

Presidential disaster declarations provide disaster aid through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and are known to be motivated by political factors as well as by need. The extent to which politics influence the Small Business Administration (SBA) disaster declaration decision, made by a presidential appointee, has not been previously measured. We use new data covering 1960-2013 to show that SBA declarations are subject to the same political influences as presidential declarations. Disasters occurring during reelection years, as well as those occurring in electorally important states, are more likely to receive SBA declarations. The effect of politics is stronger in the period prior to the passage of the Stafford Act in 1988, showing that the two types of declarations are substitutes for political purposes.

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