On Shaky Ground: The Effects of Earthquakes on Household Income and Pover
- نوع فایل : کتاب
- زبان : انگلیسی
- مؤلف : Javier E. Baez* Indhira V. Santos**
- چاپ و سال / کشور: 2008
Description
The devastating consequences of large natural disasters on socioeconomic systems are evident to all. Yet, little is really known about the magnitude of such negative effects on human development. For several reasons, El Salvador --the smallest country in Central America—is very susceptible to the effects of repeated and severe natural hazards. We use two strong earthquakes that struck El Salvador in early 2001 together with longitudinal data in a quasi-experimental fashion. Our strategy exploits the exogeneity implicit in the intensity of the geological events which is defined by their seismic parameters, the geographic coordinates of the dwellings and the predominant soil types of the villages. We find that the combined effect of both earthquakes is associated with a reduction in household income per capita of one third of the pre-shock average for households in the upper half of the ground shaking distribution There is also an increase in the depth and severity of poverty, although less significant in statistical sense. The results also highlight that the pervasive effects of natural disasters are likely to persist in the medium- and long-term. Overall, our findings do not appear to be driven by differential trends at pre-shock time, econometric specifications and methods, and sample attrition. Furthermore, we argue that the results are still informative when the empirical design is confronted with the issues of measurement error in the indicator of treatment intensity or aggregated equilibrium effects.
