Resilience in the face of the nature’s furor: natural disasters and Vietnamese households

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of natural disasters in Vietnam over the period 2002-2010. Using disaster data from the desinventa.net and data on other variables for 64 sub-regions from the General Statistic Office of Vietnam, we examine the impacts of natural disasters on household per capita income, residential investment, and domestic trade. The damage measures comprise the number of people killed, number of people injured, number of houses destroyed, and number of houses damaged. The results reveal that the aggregate effects of the disaster damages on household per capita income are insignificant and on residential investment are positive, implying the resilience of the Vietnamese people against natural disasters. We then compare and contrast the costs of disasters among different regions in Vietnam.