Safety nets and natural disaster mitigation: evidence from cyclone Phailin in Odisha

Paul Christian (), Eeshani Kandpal, Nethra Palaniswamy and Vijayendra Rao

No 8375, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: To what degree can vulnerability to extreme weather events be mitigated by access to a rural livelihoods program, particularly with regard to the impacts on women? This paper addresses this question through a natural experiment arising from two independent but overlapping sources of variation: exposure to a devastating cyclone that occurred in the Bay of Bengal region of India and the staggered rollout of a rural livelihoods intervention. Comparisons from household surveys across communities more or less exposed to the storm before and after the introduction of the program reveal that the storm led to significant reductions in overall household expenditure, and that these reductions were indeed the largest for women, adding to the emerging evidence for the frequently-posed hypothesis that women bear the brunt of the effects of disasters on overall household consumption. Participation in the livelihoods program mitigated some of the reductions in household nonfood expenditure and women's consumption, but not on food expenditure. These results from a densely populated region whose topography makes it particularly vulnerable to storms can inform future policy approaches and aid in modeling the impact of these policies on the effects of climate change.

Keywords: Climate and Meteorology; Climate Change and Environment; Climate Change and Health; Science of Climate Change; Labor Markets; Inequality; Health Care Services Industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-03-26
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/808311522070466796/pdf/WPS8375.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Safety nets and natural disaster mitigation: evidence from cyclone Phailin in Odisha (2019)
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:wbk:wbrwps:8375

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Roula I. Yazigi ().