The increase in weather and climate disasters in recent years has prompted an interest in analyzing their consequences and the mitigation and adaptation measures that can help minimize their potentially large impacts on individuals’ welfare. We match thirty-one billion-dollar disasters with individual survey data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to estimate the effect of extreme weather events on the subjective well-being of U.S. residents. Our results indicate that natural disasters have a negative and robust impact on subjective well-being in the affected communities, and that, on average, this impact peaks 6 months after the event, and then decays over time. We then investigate the attenuating impact of health care access, flood insurance, and governmental assistance programs and find a partial compensating role for risk-transfer and relief measures. We also find that stronger emotional and social support mitigates the negative impact of natural disasters.

近年来，天气和气候灾害的增加促使人们对分析其后果以及可以帮助最大程度地减少其对个人福利的潜在影响的缓解和适应措施进行分析。我们将310亿美元的灾难与来自行为风险因素监视系统的单独调查数据进行匹配，以估计极端天气事件对美国居民主观幸福感的影响。我们的结果表明，自然灾害对受影响社区的主观幸福感产生了负面而强大的影响，并且平均而言，这种影响在事件发生后的6个月达到顶峰，然后随着时间的推移而衰减。然后，我们调查医疗保健，洪水保险，和政府援助计划，并为风险转移和救济措施找到部分补偿作用。我们还发现，更强大的情感和社会支持减轻了自然灾害的负面影响。