People living in poverty are particularly vulnerable to shocks, including those caused by natural disasters such as floods and droughts. This paper analyses household survey data and hydrological ...riverine flood and drought data for 52 countries to find out whether poor people are disproportionally exposed to floods and droughts, and how this exposure may change in a future climate. We find that poor people are often disproportionally exposed to droughts and floods, particularly in urban areas. This pattern does not change significantly under future climate scenarios, although the absolute number of people potentially exposed to floods or droughts can increase or decrease significantly, depending on the scenario and region. In particular, many countries in Africa show a disproportionally high exposure of poor people to floods and droughts. For these hotspots, implementing risk-sensitive land-use and development policies that protect poor people should be a priority.
Pre-positioning of emergency supplies is one mechanism of increasing preparedness for natural disasters. The goal of this research is to develop an emergency response planning tool that determines ...the location and quantities of various types of emergency supplies to be pre-positioned, under uncertainty about if, or where, a natural disaster will occur. The paper presents a two-stage stochastic mixed integer program (SMIP) that provides an emergency response pre-positioning strategy for hurricanes or other disaster threats. The SMIP is a robust model that considers uncertainty in demand for the stocked supplies as well as uncertainty regarding transportation network availability after an event. Due to the computational complexity of the problem, a heuristic algorithm referred to as the Lagrangian L-shaped method (LLSM) is developed to solve large-scale instances of the problem. A case study focused on hurricane threat in the Gulf Coast area of the US illustrates application of the model.
•Prolonged grief disorder (PGD) cases will rise following the COVID-19 pandemic•The pandemic shows similarities to natural disasters which increase PGD prevalence.•The circumstances of death during ...the pandemic likely increase PGD prevalence.•Evidence-based interventions for PGD should be made more accessible.•Internet-based interventions for PGD should be further developed and disseminated.
Abstract
Uncertainty rises in recessions and falls in booms. But what is the causal relationship? We construct cross-country panel data on stock market returns to proxy for first- and second-moment ...shocks and instrument these with natural disasters, terrorist attacks, and political shocks. Our IV regression results reveal a robust negative short-term impact of second moments (uncertainty) on growth. Employing multiple vector autoregression estimation approaches, relying on a range of identifying assumptions, also reveals a negative impact of uncertainty on growth. Finally, we show that these results are reproducible in a conventional micro–macro business cycle model with time-varying uncertainty.
Little is known about the fiscal costs of natural disasters, especially regarding social safety nets that do not specifically target extreme weather events. This paper shows that US hurricanes lead ...to substantial increases in non-disaster government transfers, such as unemployment insurance and public medical payments, in affected counties in the decade after a hurricane. The present value of this increase significantly exceeds that of direct disaster aid. This implies, among other things, that the fiscal costs of natural disasters have been significantly underestimated and that victims in developed countries are better insured against them than previously thought.
•Comprehensive analysis of the effects of natural disasters on the income distribution in the entire United States and for all types of natural disasters.•Differentiation between individual and ...household-based measures.•Analysis of adaptation and intensification channels.•Middle incomes are particularly affected by natural disasters.
During the last decades, the United States experienced an increase in the number of natural disasters and their destructive capability. Several studies suggest a damaging effect of natural disasters on income. In this paper, I estimate the effects of natural disasters on the entire income distribution using county-level data in the United States. In particular, I determine the income fractions that are affected by natural disasters. The results suggest that in the short-term natural disasters primarily affect middle incomes, thereby leaving income inequality levels unchanged. In addition, the paper examines potential channels that intensify or mitigate the effects, such as unemployment insurance or disaster severity. The findings show that unemployment benefits are an important adaptation tool that reduces the effects of natural disasters. In contrast, the occurrence of multiple and severe disasters aggravate the effects. Finally, the analysis detects heterogeneous effects on incomes by disaster type.
Disasters can have long lasting effects, but understanding the breadth, variety and longevity of their effects can be challenging. This paper examines the long term effects and subsequent ...intergenerational transmission of exposure in childhood to the natural disasters that have occurred in Latin America in the last 100 years. The identification strategy exploits the exogenous variation in geographic location, timing and exposure of different birth cohorts to natural disasters. This study measures individuals' exposure to each disaster based on their geographic location at birth to avoid any bias in the estimates due to possible selective migration caused by each disaster. The main results indicate that children in utero and young children are the most vulnerable to natural disasters and suffer the most long-lasting negative effects. These effects include less human capital accumulation, worse health and fewer assets when they are adults. Effects are found to have a non-linear relationship with the level of development of each country. Furthermore, the results provide evidence of the intergenerational transmission of shocks, indicating that children born to mothers who had been exposed to natural disasters also have less education and increased child labor.
•Impact of natural disasters on income inequality in Sri Lanka is explored with a unique panel dataset.•Natural disasters significantly and substantially decrease household income inequality.•Rich ...are affected more as their income mainly derived from non-agricultural and non-seasonal agricultural activities.•However, natural disasters do not affect household expenditure inequality.
We explore the relationship between natural disasters and income inequality in Sri Lanka as the first study of this nature for the country. The analysis uses a unique panel data set constructed for the purpose of this paper. It contains district inequality measures based on household income reported in six waves of the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of Sri Lanka during the period between 1990 and 2013, data on disaster affected population and other economic and social indicators. Employing a panel fixed effects estimator, we find that contemporaneous natural disasters and their immediate lags significantly and substantially decrease inequality in per adult equivalent household income as measured by the Theil index. Findings are robust across various inequality metrics, sub-samples and alternative estimators such as Ordinary Least Squares and System GMM. However, natural disasters do not affect household expenditure inequality. Either households behave as if they have a permanent income or all households reduce their expenditure proportionately irrespective of their income level in responding to natural disasters. Natural disasters decrease non-seasonal agricultural and non-agricultural income inequality but increase seasonal agricultural income inequality. Income of richer households is mainly derived from non-agricultural sources such as manufacturing and business activities and non-seasonal agricultural activities. Poorer households have a higher share of agricultural income.
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