Abstract
This paper shows that natural disaster exposure in childhood negatively impacts adult earnings. Both the frequency and severity of hurricanes, floods, fires, earthquakes, and tornadoes decrease a child’s long term earnings. By controlling for the expected level of disaster in a given county, and using new day-of-event historical data dating to 1951, I exploit exogenous weather shocks to examine the cumulative impacts of disaster exposure on earnings. I show that natural disaster exposure in childhood decrease later life earnings when measured by either death’s on one’s county or frequency of declared disasters. Disasters that occur while a child is between age 5 and 10 have the largest negative impact, while those who are affected when 0-5 see little or even positive effects. This is largely because children age 5-10 face educational losses, while those 0-5 are most likely to move and ultimately attain higher levels of education. These findings show that disasters are an important part of human capital development, and that policy and individual choices can have large impacts in mitigating these losses.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Human Impacts and Responsibility
KEYWORDS
Natural Disasters, Human Capital, Earnings, Education
