This isn't the power of building codes. This is the power of productivity. Haiti has a GDP of $1,300 per person. As it turns out, about 40% of this is basical

This isn't the power of building codes. This is the power of productivity. Haiti has a GDP of $1,300 per person. As it turns out, about 40% of this is basically welfare from the rest of the world, but that is neither here nor there for the current argument. So, anyway, each Haitian is producing somewhere between $700 and $1,300 of value each year ... and likely eating 90% of that as food. The surplus that might possibly be generated in a given year is perhaps $100 or so per person. This is the cold equation of building safety: there is no way that Haitians can possibly build earthquake proof buildings on 30 cents per day. I don’t care if the building code was five times stricter, or if there were roving gangs of armed building code enforcers – the buildings in Haiti are going to be made out of scrap metal, home-made cinder blocks, and substandard concrete. The death toll in Chile was much lower because Chileans are more productive people - their per capita GDP is $15,000 - about 13 x the per capita GDP in Haiti. Bump up producitivity by 13x and you can buy a lot of things. ...including earthquake resistant buildings.