Effects of election and natural disaster mortality on calamity relief spending in India

Yashobanta Parida and Joyita Roy Chowdhury ()
Additional contact information
Joyita Roy Chowdhury: FLAME University

Economics of Governance, 2025, vol. 26, issue 1, No 4, 93-138

Abstract: Abstract Frequent occurrences of natural disasters and disaster-related deaths affect government responsiveness to disasters. This study examines how disaster mortality disaggregated by gender and upcoming state elections affected per capita calamity relief spending for Indian states from 1972 to 2019. The results suggest that calamity relief spending increased significantly when more women were killed than men due to disasters, particularly nearer state elections. Furthermore, an increase in female electoral turnout, compared to men, has also contributed to increased expenditure on calamity relief. The implementation of gender-responsive budget allocations and rising female voter participation may explain why the Indian government prioritizes female well-being. Consequently, public spending on calamity relief is more responsive to female disaster mortality. Our results remain robust across different econometric models.

Keywords: State Elections; Gender-disaggregated disaster mortality; Calamity relief spending; Two-way fixed effect estimates; Hausman & Taylor estimates (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 D72 P16 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10101-025-00324-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:ecogov:v:26:y:2025:i:1:d:10.1007_s10101-025-00324-4

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10101/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10101-025-00324-4

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Governance is currently edited by Amihai Glazer and Marko Koethenbuerger

More articles in Economics of Governance from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().