Debt and Disaster: A Longitudinal Study of Debt Service, Structural Adjustment, and Natural Disaster Outcomes

• In Event: 194 - Regular Session. Disaster

Abstract

Sociologically oriented disaster scholarship agrees that political, economic, demographic, and social factors effect disaster outcomes. Dependency theory suggests that debt in general, and structural adjustment loans especially, degrades living conditions for the poorest segments of the global population. Case studies of disaster events in countries with dependent economies support the claim that dependency worsens disaster outcomes. This paper seeks to investigate the claims of dependency theory with respect to disaster at the cross-national level by investigating debt service and structural adjustment loans. Cross-national models are presented of floods, storms, and earthquakes from 1980 to 2012 for disaster events in two-hundred-twenty-two countries and territories. Findings regarding the impact of debt is mixed: debt service is found to be a significant predictor of floods, while structural adjustment loans are found to be a significant predictor of storms and earthquakes. However, the direction of the correlation between structural adjustment and storms is positive, while it is negative with earthquakes. The study also finds that there is important variation between disaster types and the indicators that best predict disaster outcomes, suggesting that much care should be taken in policy choices, as well as future research, to disaggregate disaster type.

Author

• Rose Sayre, State University of New York-Stony Brook