Let Them Eat Risk? Wealth, Rights, and Disaster Vulnerability

Disaster-vulnerability reduction is an impure public good: when provided to one it is provided to others, but not equally provided to all. This means that in addition to the question of how much disaster-vulnerability reduction to provide, policy makers face the question of to whom it should be provided. This essay distinguishes between two broad classes of approaches to the latter question, one based on wealth, the other on rights.