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Employment assistance policies of Chinese government play positive roles! The impact of post-earthquake employment assistance policies on the health-related quality of life of Chinese earthquake populations

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Abstract

Sichuan is the province that is most affected by earthquakes in mainland China. The employment assistance policies have gained an important position in the reconstruction efforts of the government. And the health condition of survivors has long been a concern of humanities scholars. But most studies focused only on the psychological health of earthquake populations and not on their overall health status. This study used both original data and tracking data. The data analysis of this study was mainly based on comparative analysis of the two data. We conducted the first investigation in May and June and the second investigation in October and November. A total of 2,000 earthquake survivors from five hard-hit disaster areas (Wenchuan, Qingchuan, Mianzhu, Lushan, Dujiangyan) participated in the investigation. First, we give descriptive statistical analysis of the post-disaster employment assistance policies of Chinese government and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) of earthquake populations. Second, we will explore the relationship between the eight domains of HRQOL of earthquake populations. Third, we also conduct confirmatory factor analysis to the medical outcome study short form 36 (SF-36). Finally we employ the structural equation modeling (SEM) to explore the effects of post-disaster employment assistance policies on the HRQOL of earthquake populations. The following conclusions are obtained from our analysis: (1) both the post-disaster employment assistance policies and SF-36 scales have good internal consistency. (2) The assessment of the employment assistance policies is relatively low. (3) The physical health and mental health of earthquake populations are not optimistic, and the HRQOL scores are low. (4) The SEM of the effect of employment assistance policies on the HRQOL of earthquake populations shows that the implementation of the seven domains of the post-disaster employment assistance policies of Chinese government is closely related. (5) The effect of different employment assistance policies of Chinese government on HRQOL differs. A few suggestions on how to improve the HRQOL of earthquake populations are given to according to our understanding of the effect of different policies on employment.

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Notes

  1. Data were obtained on the tracking and distribution of magnitude >5.0 earthquakes in China and surrounding areas from 2008 to 2013 were obtained from the China Earthquake Administration Website. The figure is produced by ArcMap 10.1 software.

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Acknowledgments

This paper is supported by the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 71173099), the Youth Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 70903002) and the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (No. NCET-11-0228). The authors would also like to thank Peiyi Lu (Sun Yat-sen University) and Wanyi Lu (Nanjing University) for their contributions to this study.

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  1. Department of Social Work and Social Policy, School of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, Jiangsu province, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Liang

  2. School of Statistics and Mathematics, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, 310018, Zhejiang, People’s Republic of China

    Runxia Cao

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  1. Ying Liang
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Liang, Y., Cao, R. Employment assistance policies of Chinese government play positive roles! The impact of post-earthquake employment assistance policies on the health-related quality of life of Chinese earthquake populations. Soc Indic Res 120, 835–857 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-014-0620-z

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