Natural disasters and household welfare: evidence from Vietnam

We analyze how internal labor migration facilitates shock coping in rural economies. Employing high precision satellite data, we identify objective variations in the inundations generated by a catastrophic typhoon in Vietnam and match them with household panel data before and after the shock.We find that, following a massive drop in income, households cope mainly through labor migration to urban areas. Households with settled migrants ex-ante receive more remittances. Non-migrant households react by sending new members away who then remit similar amounts than established migrants. This mechanism is most effective with long-distance migration, while local networks fail to provide insurance. JEL: Q12; R23; Q54.Keywords: Risk Sharing; Internal Migration; Natural Disasters; Vietnam. * Corresponding author: André Gröger, Goethe University Frankfurt, email: agroeger@wiwi.unifrankfurt.de. Yanos Zylberberg, University of Bristol, email: yanos.zylberberg@bristol.ac.uk. We are grateful to Bob Baulch, Martina Björkman Nyqvist, Esther Duflo, Guido Friebel, Corrado Giulietti, Dany Jaimovich, Stephan Klasen, Steffen Lohmann, Rocco Macchiavello, Teresa Molina Millán, Dilip Mookherjee, Hillel Rapoport, Isabelle Sin, Steven Stillman, Alessandro Tarozzi, Sebastian Vollmer, and two anonymous referees for useful discussions and comments. We also thank participants at the

show abstract

“…6 See Dell et al (2014) for an overview and Thomas et al (2010), Arouri et al (2015) for evidence on Vietnam.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Internal Labor Migration as a Shock Coping Strategy: Evidence from a Typhoon

Gröger

Zylberberg

2016

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics

123

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Furthermore, with better access to loans and credits as well as larger assets and social networks which provide a wider portfolio for coping strategies, households or communities with higher level of education on average are better able to maintain their welfare and level of consumption after being affected by disaster shocks [79][80][81][82][83] .…”

Section: Education Changes Our Behaviour and Reduces Vulnerabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Forecasting societies' adaptive capacities through a demographic metabolism model

Lutz

Muttarak

2017

Nature Clim Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In seeking to understand how future societies will be affected by climate change we cannot simply assume they will be identical to those of today, because climate and societies are both dynamic. Here we propose that the concept of demographic metabolism and the associated methods of multidimensional population projections provide an effective analytical toolbox to forecast important aspects of societal change that affect adaptive capacity. We present an example of how the changing educational composition of future populations can influence societies' adaptive capacity. Multi-dimensional population projections form the human core of the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios, and knowledge and analytical tools from demography have great value in assessing the likely implications of climate change on future human well-being. 3Assessing the likely impacts of climate change on future human well-being requires a combination of two kinds of forecasts: how the climate of the future will be different from that of today; and how humans and there societies in the future will differ in terms of numbers, regional distributions, age structures and, most importantly, their capacities to successfully adapt to changing climatic conditions. This includes capacities at multiple levels from individual, to household, community and national level as well as the associated qualities of institutions and levels of economic development. Much work has been carried out in terms of modelling the future climatic conditions 1-3 , but very little has been done for modelling the future socioeconomic conditions. Successful adaptation is also dependent on the qualities of institutions and levels of economic development. In this Perspective, we discuss recent progress in the latter field, especially in the demographic metabolism model and illustrate the potential of multi-dimensional demographic methods for forecasting societies' adaptive capacities to climate change.The Working Group II contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report appropriately summarizes what was the state of the art on this issue: "Most scenario-based assessments superimpose biophysical 'futures' onto present-day socioeconomic conditions." 4 . While this

show abstract

“…An accompanying study, for example, shows that actual variation in rainfall and temperature conditions in rural areas is related to significant consumption and income effects also for poor people (Narloch, 2016). In addition, other work has shown the negative welfare and poverty impacts of flood and drought events (Thomas et al, 2010;Bui et al, 2014;Arouri et al, 2015). Moreover, poor people could be affected by environmental risks in many ways that go beyond income and consumption effects, such as detrimental health impacts or a decline in the quality of life due to poor environmental conditions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Vietnam flood events have been shown to significantly reduce welfare and increase poverty (Thomas et al, 2010;Bui et al, 2014;Arouri et al, 2015).…”

Section: )mentioning

confidence: 99%

The multifaceted relationship between environmental risks and poverty: new insights from Vietnam

Narloch

Bangalore

2018

Envir. Dev. Econ.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Despite complex interlinkages, insights into the multifaceted relationship between environmental risks and poverty can be gained through an analysis of different risks across space, time and scale within a single context using consistent methods. Combining geo-spatial data on eight environmental risks and household survey data from 2010-2014 for the case study of Vietnam, this paper shows: (i) at district-level the incidence of poverty is higher in high risk areas, (ii) at household-level poorer households face higher environmental risks, (iii) for some risks the relationship with household-level consumption varies between rural and urban areas, and (iv) environmental risks explain consumption differences between households, but less so changes over time. While altogether these analyses cannot establish a causal relationship between environmental risks and poverty, they do indicate that Vietnam's poor are disproportionally exposed. Given growing pressures due to climate change, addressing such risks should be a focus of poverty reduction efforts.

show abstract

Natural disasters and household welfare: evidence from Vietnam

Cited by 54 publications

References 19 publications

Internal Labor Migration as a Shock Coping Strategy: Evidence from a Typhoon

Internal Labor Migration as a Shock Coping Strategy: Evidence from a Typhoon

Forecasting societies' adaptive capacities through a demographic metabolism model

The multifaceted relationship between environmental risks and poverty: new insights from Vietnam

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About