The Chronology of A Disaster

When shocks strike they have an immediate and direct impact on life, income, and assets. This review does not aim to quantify these losses but rather to quantify the welfare gain to households of intervening early to replace lost income and assets. The impact of a shock on household welfare is the cumulative effect of the initial income or asset loss and the impact of a series of entitlement failures in the local economy that is triggered by this initial loss (Sen 1981; Devereux 2007). Much of the literature on the impact of shocks has focused on the cumulative welfare impact, and little attention has been given to the progression of entitlement failures and the timing of their impact. As a result, it has been difficult to quantify the welfare benefit of intervening earlier rather than later to mitigate the impact of the shock.

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