Rebuilding After Earthquakes: Steel Supply, Housing Capacity, and the Sustainability of Reconstruction

Earthquakes create substantial shelter and housing needs and increase pressure on the supply of reconstruction materials. This study examines the long-run relationships among earthquake-related housing needs, construction-material imports, and the global steel supply environment using annual worldwide data from 1988 to 2025, with the world-year as the unit of analysis. ARDL bounds testing and error-correction models estimate long-run and short-run relationships. Hatemi-J asymmetric causality analysis examines the direction of relationships between shocks. In the long run, prefabricated structure imports are positively associated with the homelessness indicator (β = 9.3304, p = 0.0728). This result is significant only at the 10% level and should be interpreted cautiously. Imports of iron or steel structural components are negatively associated with the homelessness indicator (β = −8.2351, p = 0.0488). Global crude steel production is positively associated with material import intensity per destroyed dwelling (β = 2.2737, p = 0.0001). The earthquake-related homelessness indicator is negatively associated with the same measure in the baseline model (β = −0.2356, p = 0.0295), but this relationship is not preserved in the alternative robustness specification. The findings highlight the importance of resilient and equitable material supply systems for sustainable post-disaster reconstruction and community recovery.