The economic impacts of direct natural disaster exposure

We estimate the economic impacts of having your home damaged or destroyed by a natural disaster. Regressions with individual, area and time fixed-effects, indicate that experiencing disaster has no impact on employment income, but substantial financial hardship risk aversion. Impacts are particularly large for smaller isolated disasters, which attract little government support. Conversely, residing in zone without residential destruction small. Using Group Fixed Effects estimator, we find predictors vulnerability to include age, parenthood, illness, social These results can help improve allocation assistance after future disasters.