The Great East Japan Earthquake created health hazards for many people. Using Panel Data gathered in Iwanuma city, Japan, at two points in time (in 2010 before the quake, and in 2013 after the quake), we found that the high degree of housing damage negatively affected victims’ self rated health (SRH) (direct effect), and decreased the levels of their social connections, which in turn also had a harmful effect on their SRH (indirect effect). We also found that although the direct impacts of earthquakes disappear relatively quickly, the harmful indirect effects associated with a decrease in social connections are slower to dissipate. We conducted a first-difference two-step GMM estimation to consider the possible problem of endogeneity. The results support the above conclusion, and show that in the short-term, the indirect impacts of the earthquake accounted for 55 % of all the impacts experienced.

东日本大地震给许多人带来了健康危害。使用在日本岩沼市收集的两个时间点（2010 年地震前和 2013 年地震后）的面板数据，我们发现高度的住房损坏对受害者的自我评价健康（SRH）产生了负面影响（直接影响），并降低了他们的社会关系水平，这反过来也对他们的 SRH 产生了有害影响（间接影响）。我们还发现，虽然地震的直接影响消失得相对较快，但与社会联系减少相关的有害间接影响消散得较慢。我们进行了一次差分两步 GMM 估计，以考虑可能存在的内生性问题。结果支持上述结论，并表明在短期内，