Natural disasters, unnatural consequences? Characterizing the causes of natural disaster’s vulnerability in Chile

Sammanfattning: Reducing inequality in Chile has long been a priority of policymakers because of its negative impacts over political representation, spatial segregation and distribution of opportunities. Through the framework of vulnerability, this research suggests that an unexpected impact of inequality in Chile is an increased likelihood of experiencing losses due to natural disasters. By using logistic multilevel regressions based on household survey data, this study finds that disaster-related losses are more likely among households with less economic capacity and entitlements, less mechanisms of political and social power, in more economically unequal settings. At the national and regional level, poverty, rurality and having experienced discrimination are found to be positively significantly associated with increases in likelihoods of losses due to natural disaster. In presence of all the studied factors of vulnerability, it is shown that the likelihood of experiencing losses due to natural disasters increases in 11 percentage points at the national level, and between 9 and 15 percentage points, depending on the region.