Narrow Results

Disaster research has been concerned with the role of adverse environmental conditions vis-à-vis adverse social conditions in determining food access during catastrophes. This paper investigates the issue, and presents household-data from flood-devastated Bangladesh to argue that, while hunger is clearly associated with exposure to disaster conditions, prior deficits in resources (given the education, occupation and ownership of productive assets of household-members) are more significant in determining the risk of consumption failure during catastrophes. The paper finds that, the risk-generating factors are often interrelated, but, their relative contributions vary across households having varying locations of natural hazards and in consumption distribution.