Safety Nets and Natural Disaster Mitigation : Evidence from Cyclone Phailin in Odisha
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 ind...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Language: | English |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/808311522070466796/Safety-nets-and-natural-disaster-mitigation-evidence-from-cyclone-Phailin-in-Odisha http://hdl.handle.net/10986/29555 |
| Summary: | 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. |
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