TY - BOOK ID - 133556359 TI - Earthquake Propensity and the Politics of Mortality Prevention AU - Plumper, Thomas AU - Keefer, Philip AU - Neumayer, Eric PY - 2010 PB - Washington, D.C., The World Bank, DB - UniCat KW - Citizen KW - Citizens KW - Conflict and Development KW - Democracy KW - Disaster Management KW - Disasters KW - Earthquake KW - Environment KW - Government policies KW - Government response KW - Hazard Risk Management KW - Health, Nutrition and Population KW - Knowledge KW - Labor Policies KW - Large numbers of people KW - Mortality KW - Mortality reduction KW - Natural Disasters KW - Policies KW - Policy KW - Policy research KW - Policy research working paper KW - Population Policies KW - Progress KW - Richer countries KW - Scarce resources KW - Social Protections and Labor KW - Societal level KW - Urban Development KW - Vulnerability UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:133556359 AB - Governments can significantly reduce earthquake mortality by implementing and enforcing quake-proof construction regulation. The authors examine why many governments do not. Contrary to intuition, controlling for the strength and location of actual earthquakes, mortality is lower in countries with higher earthquake propensity, where the payoffs to mortality prevention are higher. Importantly, however, the government response to earthquake propensity depends on country income and the political incentives of governments to provide public goods to citizens. The opportunity costs of earthquake mortality prevention are higher in poorer countries; rich countries invest more in mortality prevention than poor countries in response to a higher earthquake propensity. Similarly, governments that have fewer incentives to provide public goods, such as younger democracies, autocracies with less institutionalized ruling parties and countries with corrupt regimes, respond less to an elevated quake propensity. They therefore have higher mortality at any level of quake propensity compared to older democracies, autocracies with highly institutionalized parties and non-corrupt regimes, respectively. The authors find robust evidence for these predictions in our analysis of earthquake mortality over the period 1960 to 2005. ER -