Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Natural disasters have large and increasing economic costs, and their severity is usually measured by the asset losses they are responsible for. This presentation will discuss how to move beyond this metric and explore how natural disasters affect people’s well-being. The presentation will propose an estimate of the “socio-economic resilience” in 120 countries, defined as the ability of their population to cope with and recover from natural disasters, and use this assessment to prioritize policy options to reduce disasters’ impacts, such as expanding financial inclusion, insurance, social protection, contingent finance and reserve funds, or universal access to early warning systems.