Model and Methods for Estimating the Number of People Living in Extreme Poverty Because of the Direct Impacts of Natural Disasters
Natural disasters have an impact on poverty through many different channels -- economic growth, health, schooling, behaviors -- that are difficult to quantify. It is nonetheless possible to assess the short-term impacts of income losses. A counterf...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/836301478979358386/Model-and-methods-for-estimating-the-number-of-people-living-in-extreme-poverty-because-of-the-direct-impacts-of-natural-disasters http://hdl.handle.net/10986/25689 |
| Summary: | Natural disasters have an impact on
poverty through many different channels -- economic growth,
health, schooling, behaviors -- that are difficult to
quantify. It is nonetheless possible to assess the
short-term impacts of income losses. A counterfactual
scenario is built of what people's income would be in
developing countries in the absence of natural disasters.
This scenario uses surveys of 1.4 million households in 89
countries. Depending on where they live and work, what they
consume, and the nature of their vulnerability, the
additional income that each household in the survey could
earn every year on average in the absence of natural
disasters is calculated. The analysis concludes that if all
disasters could be prevented next year, 26 million fewer
people would be in extreme poverty—that is, living on less
than $1.90 a day. A systematic analysis of the uncertainty
suggests that this impact could lie between 7 million if all
the most optimistic assumptions are combined, and 77 million
if we retain only the most pessimistic assumptions. |
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