Reproducibility package for Are The Poor More Exposed To Climate Hazards In Latin America?

This paper aims to answer two main questions. First, what is the number of people exposed to climate hazards in LAC, and whether the exposure rate is higher for the poor than the non-poor. Second, whether there are hotspots, namely areas in the region where the incidence of climate hazard exposure and poverty rate are so high that they merit special policy attention. To answer these questions, we use an overlay of poverty maps and georeferenced information about climate hazards in the region as per methods by Doan, et al. (2023) but using five -rather than four- climate hazards (droughts, hurricanes, heatwaves, floods and landslides) and poverty maps at the administrative level 2 (ADM2, referring to county, district or municipality) rather than only provincial or departmental level (ADM1). Our estimates indicate that 36.9 percent of the population is exposed to at least one of the five climate hazards under consideration. If looking at the population in poverty only, the percentage is higher, 44.6 percent, whereas the exposure rate for the non-poor is 34.0 percent. Some areas in the territory of the continent experience high exposure to climate hazards and high poverty rates. These hotspots include about 10 percent of the population of the region. These areas are located in the Brazilian north-east, the upper-Amazon region of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Brazil, the Chaco region of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, the islands of the Caribbean, the western coast of the Gulf of California and the Yucatan Peninsula.