The purpose of the present paper is to disentangle the mechanisms that connect climate change-induced disasters, inequality and vulnerability by accounting for both directions of causality. We do so by means of a simultaneous equations approach on a panel of 149 countries from 1992 to 2018. The empirical analysis reveals that countries with higher levels of income inequality suffer greater damages when hit by a natural disaster. At the same time, inequality is found to increase the number of people affected by disasters. Our analysis discloses the existence of a vicious cycle that keeps some countries stuck in a disasters-inequality trap.

中文翻译：

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气候变化引发的“自然”灾害和不平等的陷阱

本文件的目的是通过考虑两个方向的因果关系，解开将气候变化引起的灾害、不平等和脆弱性联系起来的机制。我们通过对 1992 年至 2018 年的 149 个国家的联立方程方法进行分析。实证分析表明，收入不平等程度较高的国家在遭受自然灾害时遭受的损失更大。同时，发现不平等会增加受灾害影响的人数。我们的分析揭示了一种恶性循环的存在，使一些国家陷入了灾难-不平等的陷阱。