How Economic Inequality Makes Hurricanes More Deadly

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/10/29/1104111/economic-inequality-hurricanes/

By Zack Beauchamp posted from ThinkProgress Economy on Oct 29, 2012

While the Eastern seaboard braces for Hurricane Sandy, 65 people have already been killed by the storm in the Caribbean. The tragic death toll and accompanying widespread property damage are caused in part by poor infrastructure and poverty — problems that aren’t limited to the Caribbean. Indeed, America’s inequality problem is a key reason why natural disasters wreak such havoc inside the United States.

That our stratified society makes storms more deadly is nearly universally believed by disaster experts. According to a paper by three experts at the University of South Carolina (Cutter et al.), “[t]here is a general consensus within the social science community” that some key causes of vulnerability to storms include “lack of access to resources (including information, knowledge, and technology); limited access to political power and representation; social capital, including social networks and connections; beliefs and customs; building stock and age; frail and physically limited individuals; and type and density of infrastructure and lifelines.” Inequality was, the researchers found, the single most important predictor of vulnerability to storm damage — variation in the wealth of individual counties alone explained 12.4 percent of the differences in the impact of natural disasters between counties.

The reasons for this are fairly clear — poorer communities have less resources to evacuate and prepare for storms, and also live in housing that’s less likely to be build to withstand nature’s wrath.