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The effect of natural disasters on household economic hardship during a pandemic

General Information

Title
The effect of natural disasters on household economic hardship during a pandemic
Author
HanNa Lim, Su Hyun Shin, Hyunjung Ji
Publication Type
Journal paper
Outlet
The Journal of Consumer Affairs
Year
2022
Abstract
The year 2020 provided a rare opportunity to examine how U.S. households experience economic hardship when natural disasters occur during a large-scale public health crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Using a nationally representative sample of adults, this study examines the effect of natural disasters on household economic hardships during a pandemic, measured by food insecurity, mortgage or rent delinquency, and unemployment. The study estimated individual fixed-effect models after controlling for time trends and time-variant covariates. We find that while a disaster incident in the community during a pandemic is not associated with household economic hardships in aggregate, its effects are experienced differently by people according to the community-level severity of COVID-19 and the individual-level factors characterized as vulnerability and resilience. Our findings have implications for targeted disaster relief and for building resilience among residents to adverse events.