Disasters and Economic Welfare : Can National Savings Help Explain Post-disaster Changes in Consumption?

Mechler, Reinhard

关键词: ACCOUNTING;    ADVERSE CONSEQUENCES;    ADVERSE EFFECTS;    ADVERSE IMPACT;    AGRICULTURE;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-4988
RP-ID  :  WPS4988

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The debate on whether natural disasterscause significant macroeconomic impacts and indeed hinderdevelopment is ongoing. Most analyses along these lines havefocused on impacts on gross domestic product. This paperlooks beyond this standard national accounting aggregate,and examines whether traditional and alternative nationalsavings measures combined with adjustments for thedestruction of capital stocks may contribute to betterexplaining post-disaster changes in welfare as measured bychanges in consumption expenditure. The author concludesthat including disaster asset losses may help to betterexplain variations in post-disaster consumption, albeitalmost exclusively for the group of low-income countries.The observed effect is rather small and in the range of afew percent of the explained variation. For low-incomecountries, capital stock and changes therein, such as forcedby disaster shocks, seem to play a more important role thanfor higher-income economies, where human capital andtechnological progress become crucial. There are importantdata constraints and uncertainties, particularly regardingthe quality of disaster loss data and the shares of capitalstock losses therein. Another important challengepotentially biasing the results is the lack of data onalternative savings measures for many disaster-exposedlower-income countries and small island states.