The Fiscal Cost of Hurricanes: Disaster Aid versus Social Insurance

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Deryugina, Tatyana
• 署名单位: University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20140296
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 168-198
• 关键词: labor; wages

摘要

Little is known about the fiscal costs of natural disasters, especially regarding social safety nets that do not specifically target extreme weather events. This paper shows that US hurricanes lead to substantial increases in non-disaster government transfers, such as unemployment insurance and public medical payments, in affected counties in the decade after a hurricane. The present value of this increase significantly exceeds that of direct disaster aid. This implies, among other things, that the fiscal costs of natural disasters have been significantly underestimated and that victims in developed countries are better insured against them than previously thought.