Does safer housing save lives? An analysis of typhoon mortality and dwellings in the Philippines

Abstract

Storms globally account for the highest loss of life among weather-related natural hazards. This study examines the relationship between components of housing vulnerability and typhoon related mortality in the Philippines at a municipal level between 2005 and 2015 using a Hurdle Negative Binomial (HNB) model. We find that in municipalities with greater prevalence of extreme substandard housing, unimproved household water sources, crowdedness, lower housing density, and less secure tenure, people are more likely to die from typhoons when controlling for typhoon proximity and wind speed as well as coastal proximity. We recommend targeted investments in safer housing in municipalities of Region VIII, Region XI and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) where correlations between housing vulnerability and disaster mortality are the highest. This research provides new knowledge of the link between housing and mortality in disasters, offering one of the first national scale assessments to quantify the contributions of safer housing in reducing loss of life in disasters.