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

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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.

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Notes

  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. 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.

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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.

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Authors and 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

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  1. Yang Zhou
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  2. Ning Li
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  3. Wenxiang Wu
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  4. Haolong Liu
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  5. Li Wang
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  6. Guangxu Liu
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  7. Jidong Wu
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Correspondence to Ning Li.

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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

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-014-1198-0

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