Skip to main content
Read full article

Socioeconomic development and the impact of natural disasters: some empirical evidences from China

Natural Hazards volume 74, pages 541–554 (2014)Cite this article

Abstract

Significant advancements have been made in examining the relationship between economic development and disaster losses at the global and national scales, but very little research has been done at the sub-national level, especially in China. Based on socioeconomic and disaster impact data from 31 provinces (municipalities, and autonomous regions) in China from 1990 to 2010, ordinary least squares regression was used to determine the relationship between socioeconomic development and effects of natural disasters. Results showed that economic development played a distinct role in mitigating disaster damages in the whole China and its eastern, central and western regions. There existed a U-shaped relationship between economic growth and disaster losses in the whole China and its eastern region, and an inverted-U nonlinearity linkage in its central and western areas. These findings further confirmed the existence of a nonlinear relationship between economic development and disaster losses. Economic growth had played a more important role in mitigating disaster losses in the central region of China than that in the western one. Further investigations demonstrated that as economic develops, there were fewer deaths caused by natural hazards in whole China and all its three regions. The combination of the lower level of education, higher unemployment rate and greater gross dependence ratio has contributed to the increase in death toll caused by natural disasters, but this trend could be partly offset by wealth growth.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Notes

  1. 1.

    In this database, an event qualifies as a disaster if at least one of the following criteria is fulfilled: 10 or more people are reported killed; 100 or more people are reported affected, injured and/or homeless; there has been a declaration of a state of emergency, or there has been a call for international assistance.

  2. 2.

    Following Kahn (2005), in the models estimated, we actually use Ln (Lossesit/GDP it  + 1) or Ln ((Number of deaths) it +1) as the dependent variables in order to avoid loss of observations due to the large number of zeros.

References

  1. Barredo JI (2009) Normalised flood losses in Europe: 1976–2006. Nat Hazards Earth Syst 9:97–104

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Bouwer LM, Crompton RP, Faust E, Höppe P, Pielke RA (2007) Confronting disaster losses. Science 318:753

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Cavallo E, Powell A, Becerra O (2010) Estimating the direct economic damages of the Earthquake in Haiti. Econ J 120(546):F298–F312

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Fuchs S, Heiss K, Huebl J (2007) Towards an empirical vulnerability function for use in debris flow risk assessment. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 7:495–506

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Hallegatte S (2011) How economic growth and rational decisions can make disaster losses grow faster than wealth. Sustainable development network. The World Bank

  6. Hallegatte S (2012) Economics: the rising costs of hurricanes. Nat Clim Change 2:148–149

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Hallegatte S, Przyluski V (2010) The economics of natural disasters: concepts and methods. The World Bank, Sustainable Development Network, Washington, DC

    Book  Google Scholar 

  8. Hao L, Zhang X, Liu S (2012) Risk assessment to China’s agricultural drought disaster in county unit. Nat Hazards 61(2):785–801

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. He L, Duchin F (2009) Regional development in China: interregional transportation infrastructure and regional comparative advantage. Econ Syst Res 21(1):3–22

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. He B, Wu J, Lv A, Cui X, Zhou L, Liu M, Zhao L (2013) Quantitative assessment and spatial characteristic analysis of agricultural drought risk in China. Nat Hazards 66:155–166

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) (2009) Global assessment report on disaster risk reduction: risk and poverty in a changing climate. United Nations, Geneva

    Google Scholar 

  12. Kahn ME (2005) The death toll from natural disasters: the role of income, geography and institutions. Rev Econ Stat 87:271–284

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Kellenberg D, Mobarak A (2008) Does rising income increase or decrease damage risk from natural disasters? J Urban Econ 63:788–802

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Li H (2010) On socioeconomic factors of natural disasters. China Popul Resour Environ 20(11):142–146

    Google Scholar 

  15. Li K, Wu S, Dai E, Xu Z (2012) Flood loss analysis and quantitative risk assessment in China. Nat Hazards 63(2):737–760

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Liu Y, Yu Y, Li L (2012) Major natural disasters and their spatio-temporal variation in the history of China. J Geogr Sci 22(6):963–976

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Ministry of Civil Affairs of China (MCA) (2011) China civil affairs’ statistical yearbook. China Statistics Press, Beijing

    Google Scholar 

  18. Neumayer E, Barthel F (2011) Normalizing economic loss from natural disasters: a global analysis. Global Environ Chang 21(1):13–24

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Nie C, Li H, Yang L, Wu S, Liu Y, Liao Y (2012) Spatial and temporal changes in flooding and the affecting factors in China. Nat Hazards 61(2):425–439

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Noy I (2009) The macroeconomic consequences of disasters. J Dev Econ 8(2):221–231

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Padli J (2009) Natural disaster death and socioeconomic factors in selected Asian countries: a panel analysis. Asian Social Sci 5(4):65–71

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Parry ML, Canziani OF, Palutikof JP, van der Linden PJ, Hanson CE (2007) Climate Change 2007: impacts, adoption and vulnerability. Contribution of working group II to the fourth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC). Cambridge University Press, New York

  23. Raschky PA (2008) Institutions and the losses from natural disasters. Nat Hazards Earth Syst Sci 8:627–634

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Schumacher I, Strobl E (2011) Economic development and losses due to natural disasters: the role of hazard exposure. Ecol Econ 72:97–105

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Shao M, Gong Z, Xu X (2013) Risk assessment of rainstorm and flood disasters in China between 2004 and 2009 based on gray fixed weight cluster analysis. Nat Hazards. doi:10.1007/s11069-013-0664-4

    Google Scholar 

  26. Shi P (2011) Atlas of natural disaster risks of China. Science Press, Beijing

    Google Scholar 

  27. Skidmore M, Toya H (2002) Do natural disasters promote long-run growth? Econ Inq 40:664–687

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Strobl E (2012) The economic growth impact of natural disasters in developing countries: evidence from hurricane strikes in the central American and Caribbean regions. J Dev Econ 97:130–141

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Tang X, Xu L, Zhang Z, Lv X (2013) Effects of glacier melting on socioeconomic development in the Manas River basin, China. Nat Hazards 66(2):533–544

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Tavares J (2004) The open society assesses its enemies: shocks, disasters and terrorist attacks. J Monet Econ 51:1039–1070

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. Toya H, Skidmore M (2007) Economic development and the impacts of natural disasters. Econ Lett 94:20–25

    Article  Google Scholar 

  32. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2004) Reducing disaster risk: a challenge for development. http://www.undp.org/bcpr

  33. Vu TB, Noy I (2013) Regional effects of natural disasters in China. SEF Working paper: 03/2013

  34. Xiao Y (2011) Local economic impacts of natural disasters. J Reg Sci 51(4):804–820

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Zhang Q, Wu L, Liu Q (2009) Tropical cyclone damages in China 1983–2006. Bull Am Meteorol Soc 90(4):489–495

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Zhang Q, Xiao M, Singh VP, Chen X (2013a) Copula-based risk evaluation of hydrological droughts in the East River basin, China. Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess 27(6):1397–1406

    Article  Google Scholar 

  37. Zhang Q, Xiao M, Singh VP, Chen X (2013b) Copula-based risk evaluation of droughts across the Pearl River basin, China. Theor Appl Climatol 111(1–2):119–131

    Article  Google Scholar 

  38. Zhou Y, Li N, Wu W, Wu J, Gu X, Ji Z (2013) Exploring the characteristics of major natural disasters in China and their impacts during the past decades. Nat Hazards 69(1):829–843

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (973 Program) (2012CB955402), International Cooperation Project funded by Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2012DFG20710) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (41171401). The authors would like to acknowledge anonymous reviewers for their useful comments that have greatly improved the manuscript.

Author information

Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster, MOE, Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Ministry of Civil Affairs and Ministry of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, China

    Yang Zhou, Ning Li & Jidong Wu

  2. Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Yang Zhou, Wenxiang Wu & Haolong Liu

  3. Department of International Health, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, PO Box 616, 6200 MD, Maastricht, The Netherlands

    Li Wang

  4. Gannan Normal University, Ganzhou, 341000, China

    Guangxu Liu

Authors
  1. Yang Zhou
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ning Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Wenxiang Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Haolong Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Li Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Guangxu Liu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Jidong Wu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ning Li.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhou, Y., Li, N., Wu, W. et al. Socioeconomic development and the impact of natural disasters: some empirical evidences from China. Nat Hazards 74, 541–554 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-014-1198-0

Download citation

Keywords

  • Socioeconomic development
  • Natural disaster impacts
  • Ordinary least squares (OLS)
  • China