ABSTRACT
The length of time that someone has lived can significantly affect that person’s ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disaster. Indeed, age is correlated with a number of factors associated with one’s likelihood of withstanding a disaster event. For example, age in many ways influences cognitive development, physical ability and mobility, socioeconomic status, access to resources, assumed responsibility for disaster preparedness and response activities, and levels of social integration or isolation. Thus, it is clear that age alone does not make a person vulnerable. Instead, age interacts with many other factors to result in the increased vulnerability of some population groups, particularly the very young and the old. As such, this chapter focuses specifically on the vulnerabilities of children and the elderly in disaster.
