Valuing mortality and morbidity in the context of disaster risks
Policy research working paper 4832
This document addresses benefit-cost analyses of disaster risk reduction (DRR) projects as a tool for evaluating the efficiency of such projects, and an input into decision making, including the benefits of reduced death and injury. The authors review the literature on valuing reduced death and injury, and suggest methods for calculating order-of-magnitude estimates of these benefits.
The paper begins with statistics on the deaths and injuries associated with various types of disasters. Section III presents the framework of a probabilistic benefit-cost analysis of an ex ante measure to reduce disaster risk. Sections IV and V discuss methods of valuing avoided death and injury. Section IV presents a conceptual framework for valuing risk of death and briefly reviews the empirical literature on mortality risk valuation. Section V discusses injury valuation. And section VI of the paper summarizes recommendations for including deaths and injuries in benefit-cost analyses of disaster risk reduction projects.