Measuring Natural Risks in the Philippines: Socioeconomic Resilience and Wellbeing Losses

Brian James Walsh and Stephane Hallegatte

No 8723, Policy Research Working Paper Series from The World Bank

Abstract: Traditional risk assessments use asset losses as the main metric to measure the severity of a disaster. This paper proposes an expanded risk assessment based on a framework that adds socioeconomic resilience and uses wellbeing losses as its main measure of disaster severity. Using a new, agent-based model that represents explicitly the recovery and reconstruction process at the household level, this risk assessment provides new insights into disaster risks in the Philippines. First, there is a close link between natural disasters and poverty. On average, the estimates suggest that almost half a million Filipinos per year face transient consumption poverty due to natural disasters. Nationally, the bottom income quintile suffers only 9 percent of the total asset losses, but 31 percent of the total wellbeing losses. The average annual wellbeing losses due to disasters in the Philippines is estimated at US$3.9 billion per year, more than double the asset losses of US$1.4 billion. Second, the regions identified as priorities for risk-management interventions differ depending on which risk metric is used. Cost-benefit analyses based on asset losses direct risk reduction investments toward the richest regions and areas. A focus on poverty or wellbeing rebalances the analysis and generates a different set of regional priorities. Finally, measuring disaster impacts through poverty and wellbeing impacts allows the quantification of the benefits from interventions like rapid post-disaster support and adaptive social protection. Although these measures do not reduce asset losses, they efficiently reduce their consequences for wellbeing by making the population more resilient.

Keywords: Inequality; Natural Disasters; Disaster Management; Hazard Risk Management; Social Risk Management; Disability; Services&Transfers to Poor; Access of Poor to Social Services; Economic Assistance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cmp, nep-env, nep-rmg, nep-sea and nep-ure
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/482401548966120315/pdf/WPS8723.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Measuring Natural Risks in the Philippines: Socioeconomic Resilience and Wellbeing Losses (2020)
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:8723

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 ().