Politicians reap higher electoral benefits from doling out disaster relief money than they do from spending money beforehand on disaster prevention. According to a new paper by Andrew Healy, an economist at Loyola Marymount University, that creates an incentive for governments to underprepare for natural disasters.
So if voters reward poor preparedness, Healy writes, the American voter “bears some responsibility” for the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and other disasters that were made worse by poor prevention efforts.
Healy finds that, on average, every $1 spent on disaster mitigation prevents roughly $8 of disaster damage over the following five years. But in most cases, voters shun politicians who call for more investment in infrastructure and other disaster preparedness efforts when the skies are clear.
Politicians routinely run on pledges to prevent crime by putting more cops on the street. Why don’t more candidates run on preventing future floods by putting more levees on the river?
(Hat tip: Overcoming Bias)
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I don’t think it’s just in the area of disaster. I’m a software developer, and I regularly see people get rewarded – even promoted! – for coming in and “saving the day” when something goes horribly wrong with the software (e.g., it keeps crashing). But what rewards are given to those of us who just develop it the right way in the first place so that these problems don’t ever occur? My guess is that this trend is not just limited to IT!
In addition to immediacy and visibility factors mentioned already, there’s another: Large public-works projects such as levees — or levee enhancements — tend to be fought against by environmentalists or people who whine about “eyesores” and other concerns … whereas adding cops to the beat is not something they oppose.
Building a flood control structure is a government funded construction project in a local area and is classified as “pork barrel spending”. If the prevailing mood is against “pork” it probably won’t happen.
There are two types of levees 1) those that have been breached and 2) those that will be breached. If it is difficult to get money to build a levee it is even more difficult to get money to maintain them in good condition.
It would be interesting to compare the flood damage to areas unprotected by levees to the damage in areas that are protected. High value assets are more likely to be behind a levee so if there is a breach damage could be much larger than for an unprotected area. I would expect the damage to be proportional to ($ of assets per acre) x (frequency of damaging floods).
The probability of a levee breach is much larger than people realize and the breach at the worst possible time.
I don’t think this is the answer you’re looking for, but I’d like to believe the reason is that putting more levees on rivers doesn’t prevent floods – it just defers them, or pushes them downstream, and then makes them worse when they do occur.
Sensible river community management would be helping people make better choices about where to situate their permanent assets (like homes), rather than subsidizing homes and businesses built on flood plains.
The assumptions of this article are far fetched, starting with:
“the American voter “bears some responsibility” for the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina and other disasters that were made worse by poor prevention efforts.”
The defective levees were built and poorly maintained by the Corps of Engineers, and the defective flood pumps designed to drain the flood waters were poorly maintained by the City of New Orleans.
I worked in NOLA for 4 months as a consultant, and every week there was an airing on PBS about the precarious conditions that would occur if a direct hurricane hit occurred. Any person that stayed behind after they were warned for 3 days to evacuate took on a serious risk.
Why would the author blame the “American Voter”?
I’d connect it to the human love of and fascination with stories. The key difference between disaster relief and disaster preparation is that only in the former does the devastation of a natural disaster actually occur – therefore, it is more dramatic and thus more visible to voters, as are the actions taken with regard to it.
This makes sense. Preventive measures are often seen as unnecessary spending. Preventive measures are analogous in many ways to the act of saving, which we know most Americans don’t believe in. At the same time, remedial measures are seen as fulfilling a true need.
Also, when a road needs to be repaved, traffic is disrupted during the paving, and people complain. Most infrastructure upgrades result in disruptions during the upgrade. Therefore during the planning and actual construction, people complain and are not usually thankful.
Various permit requirements also prolong any action, and provide the public with excuses to oppose the upgrades.
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