When Disaster Strikes, Poor Hit Harder

By Diana Barnes-Brown for Body1

Over the past two years, the world has been left reeling by the advent of several natural disasters, catastrophic not only for the material objects they destroyed, but for the intense cost in terms of human lives.

The 2004 Asian tsunami, the Pakistani earthquake that took place last fall and, on the home front, the disastrous Hurricane Katrina claimed the lives of countless disadvantaged and poor people. Not to mention the recent tsunami disaster in Indonesia.

Take Action

Your Help Counts The following are organizations that respond internationally to natural disasters. Visit their sites to find out how you can volunteer or contribute. The International Red Cross and Red Crescent provides help to people world wide. Click here to see more. Habitat for Humanity has a disaster response office focused on helping to rebuild in disaster stricken areas. Click here to see more. Crisis Corps is a division of the Peace Corps that sends volunteers specifically to regions hit by natural disasters. Click here to see more. Be Prepared The national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publish several pamphlets aimed at preparing yourself for natural disasters. Click here to see more.

Researchers point to these terrible events as evidence that socioeconomic status is often a deciding factor when it comes to who makes it out alive and who does not.

A paper released by Columbia University's Earth Institute noted that many of the dead in the Asian tsunami were poor, or at least in lower socioeconomic groups. Researchers are having trouble determining the economic toll of the deaths because most of the dead had very little impact on the formal economy due to their low levels of income and spending. Further, because many of these people lacked the means for property insurance, the massive amount of property destruction did not show up on insurance records.

The global community has long been aware that when countries rank very low in indexes such as the Human Development Index, which measures levels of factors such as poverty, education, literacy, childbirth, and life expectancy throughout the world, they suffer many more casualties in the event of natural disaster.

One of the contributing factors to this scenario is that the poor and disadvantaged often are forced to live in places where the property values and costs are lower, in part because they are known to be at higher risk for destruction by natural or man-made disasters. The area most severely flooded in New Orleans, for example, was the Lower Ninth Ward, an area where levee engineers had acknowledged there was a much higher risk of a breach and flooding in the case of a severe hurricane. Add to that the poorly constructed run-down homes and lack of climate control in extreme conditions, and a deadly combination of risk and destruction lies in wait for an opportunity to manifest.

The death toll of the Asian Tsunami is estimated at about 300,000, though there are still disputes about whether more people were lost or unaccounted for. The death toll of the 2005 Pakistani earthquake is estimated at about 100,000, and there is little official information available about the final count of the dead from Hurricane Katrina, in part because of the combination of heat, water and delayed rescue times. Relief organizations are still actively campaigning to help those affected by each of these disasters, and leaders in global charity initiatives have noted that sustained giving is key in reducing the likelihood of long-term fallout from such disasters.

The Earth Institute at Columbia University is dedicated to working for sustainable development, advocating for the world's poor with research designed to foster learning about financial and social inequity and the risks that go along with these two societal ills.

Last updated: 18-Jul-06