Coverage or Intensity of Support ? Adaptive Social Protection to Reduce Disaster-Related Poverty

Robin Middelanis, Bramka Arga Jafino and Yasuhiro Kawasoe

No 11334, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Disasters due to natural hazards pose a significant threat to people’s well-being and increase the risk of poverty, particularly in vulnerable populations. This paper provides a novel global estimate of poverty due to disasters, showing that 25.6 million people are at risk of poverty due to disasters, 12.7 million thereof facing extreme poverty. Disaster-related consumption losses amount to $758 billion and cause well-being losses equivalent to a uniform drop in consumption of $1,143 billion. Adaptive social protection aims to mitigate these risks by integrating social protection, disaster risk management, and climate adaptation to enhance disaster resilience. Yet, given limited resources, finding the right balance between coverage (the breadth of the population reached by the measure) and intensity (the extent to which each beneficiary is supported) of policy measures is challenging. The paper systematically analyzes this trade-off for various adaptive social protection measures across 131 countries. Total benefits are usually largest for the scenarios with the most extensive coverage and intensity, but the optimal expansion path differs between measures and by country income groups. The results suggest that prioritizing a measure’s intensity while focusing on lower-income populations is generally the most effective approach to reduce socio-economic disaster impacts. While this pattern holds across all income groups, lower-income countries benefit more strongly from early coverage increases than higher-income countries.

Date: 2026-03-18
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