Natural Disasters and Economic Growth in Pakistan: An Enquiry of Floods Related Fatalities’ Triad

Voluminous work has been produced on natural disasters and economic growth nexus but studies dealing specifically floods related fatalities and economic growth linkages are scant and this is particularly true for Pakistan. Present study is an attempt to investigate the determinants of the magnitude of floods related fatalities and to gauge impact thereof on GDP per capita growth of Pakistan by employing „Two Stage Least Square (2SLS)‟ technique on time series data from 1972-2013. Unlike previous work, this study considers three dimensions of calamity namely floods-affected people, floods related mortalities and damages done by the floods in totality while gauging the impact. This study finds that floods related fatalities have significant negative impact on GDP per capita growth of the economy. The strongest impact is observed for the monetary damages done by the floods. GDP per capita growth and effects of disaster management authorities are found reducing impact of floods through floods-related fatalities suggesting that higher income is enabling the government by increasing financial resources to do investment in floods resistance measures. Most importantly, floods frequency (FF) has a robust positive impact to determine the floods related fatalities suggesting lack of learning from the past floods events. Based on the findings, in general, this work recommends taking both structural and non-structural floods mitigation measures particularly in these regions that are located in floods plain areas. By highlighting some of the findings, we identify research areas of interest for future work. Supervisor:- Dr. Sajid Amin Javed

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Author: Asif Sardar
Supervisor: Sajid Amin Javed
Keywords : Determinants Of The Magnitude Of Floods-related Fatalities, Education Attainment, Floods Frequency, INFRASTRUCTURE, Per Capita GDP Growth

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