RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, USA.
School of Social Policy and Practice and Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Nat Hum Behav. 2023 Sep;7(9):1442-1453. doi: 10.1038/s41562-023-01610-z. Epub 2023 Jun 1.
Although natural disasters are commonplace, they leave in their wake an enormous amount of damage. The physical damage they cause is immediately apparent, but less obvious is the potential magnitude of disruptions to learning and resulting damage to human capital. Using the universe of Presidential Disaster Declarations in the United States, we show that natural disasters impact a region's human capital both via reductions in learning for students who remain in school as well as a reduction in the years of schooling completed. These effects appear to be scarring and persistent. Quantifying these losses using the implied reduction of lifetime earnings suggests that natural disasters reduce a region's human capital by a similar magnitude as the assessed property damage.
尽管自然灾害很常见，但它们造成的破坏是巨大的。它们造成的物质破坏是显而易见的，但不太明显的是，它们可能会对学习造成干扰，并对人力资本造成损害。本文利用美国总统灾难声明的全集，表明自然灾害会通过减少在校学生的学习时间以及减少完成的学年数，对受灾地区的人力资本产生影响。这些影响似乎具有长期性和持久性。利用隐含的终身收入减少来量化这些损失表明，自然灾害对一个地区的人力资本的破坏程度与评估的财产损失相当。
