Publication: Exploring Household Recovery after a Disaster in a Conflict Setting: The Case of the June-November 2022 Nigerian Floods
Loading...
Date
2025-07-10
ISSN
Published
2025-07-10
Editor(s)
Abstract
This paper examines the compounded effects of conflict on household recovery following disasters, using Nigeria as a case study. The analysis employs the “Unbreakable” microsimulation model to analyze how proximity to conflict influences recovery rates and well-being, measured by consumption losses. Key factors affecting recovery include exposure bias, vulnerability bias, and limited access to resources and social safety nets. Poor households often live in risk-prone areas due to socioeconomic opportunities, making them more vulnerable to disaster impacts. Their livelihoods, typically in sectors like subsistence farming, are easily disrupted, prolonging recovery. Inadequate housing and limited financial access further hinder rebuilding efforts. By integrating conflict data, the paper reveals how violence exacerbates recovery challenges, increasing consumption losses and deepening poverty impacts. The findings highlight the need for targeted resilience policies to address both disaster and conflict-related vulnerabilities, aiming to enhance recovery capacity and minimize welfare losses for the most affected populations.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Ben Bih, Karima; Jafino, Bramka; Desjonqueres, Chloe; Sirenko, Mikhail. 2025. Exploring Household Recovery after a Disaster in a Conflict Setting: The Case of the June-November 2022 Nigerian Floods. Policy Research Working Paper; 11168. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/43439 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Future of Poverty(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-15)Climate change is increasingly acknowledged as a critical issue with far-reaching socioeconomic implications that extend well beyond environmental concerns. Among the most pressing challenges is its impact on global poverty. This paper projects the potential impacts of unmitigated climate change on global poverty rates between 2023 and 2050. Building on a study that provided a detailed analysis of how temperature changes affect economic productivity, this paper integrates those findings with binned data from 217 countries, sourced from the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform. By simulating poverty rates and the number of poor under two climate change scenarios, the paper uncovers some alarming trends. One of the primary findings is that the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide could be nearly doubled due to climate change. In all scenarios, Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to bear the brunt, contributing the largest number of poor people, with estimates ranging between 40.5 million and 73.5 million by 2050. Another significant finding is the disproportionate impact of inequality on poverty. Even small increases in inequality can lead to substantial rises in poverty levels. For instance, if every country’s Gini coefficient increases by just 1 percent between 2022 and 2050, an additional 8.8 million people could be pushed below the international poverty line by 2050. In a more extreme scenario, where every country’s Gini coefficient increases by 10 percent between 2022 and 2050, the number of people falling into poverty could rise by an additional 148.8 million relative to the baseline scenario. These findings underscore the urgent need for comprehensive climate policies that not only mitigate environmental impacts but also address socioeconomic vulnerabilities.Publication Exports, Labor Markets, and the Environment(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-14)What is the environmental impact of exports? Focusing on 2000–20, this paper combines customs, administrative, and census microdata to estimate employment elasticities with respect to exports. The findings show that municipalities that faced increased exports experienced faster growth in formal employment. The elasticities were 0.25 on impact, peaked at 0.4, and remained positive and significant even 10 years after the shock, pointing to a long and protracted labor market adjustment. In the long run, informal employment responds negatively to export shocks. Using a granular taxonomy for economic activities based on their environmental impact, the paper documents that environmentally risky activities have a larger share of employment than environmentally sustainable ones, and that the relationship between these activities and exports is nuanced. Over the short run, environmentally risky employment responds more strongly to exports relative to environmentally sustainable employment. However, over the long run, this pattern reverses, as the impact of exports on environmentally sustainable employment is more persistent.Publication The Macroeconomic Implications of Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Options(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-05-29)Estimating the macroeconomic implications of climate change impacts and adaptation options is a topic of intense research. This paper presents a framework in the World Bank's macrostructural model to assess climate-related damages. This approach has been used in many Country Climate and Development Reports, a World Bank diagnostic that identifies priorities to ensure continued development in spite of climate change and climate policy objectives. The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability --- with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. The integrated modeling approach proposed in this paper can inform policymakers as they make proactive decisions on climate change adaptation and resilience.Publication The Asymmetric Bank Distress Amplifier of Recessions(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-11)One defining feature of financial crises, evident in U.S. and international data, is asymmetric bank distress—concentrated losses on a subset of banks. This paper proposes a model in which shocks to borrowers’ productivity dispersion lead to asymmetric bank losses. The framework exhibits a “bank distress amplifier,” exacerbating economic downturns by causing costly bank failures and raising uncertainty about the solvency of banks, thereby pushing banks to deleverage. Quantitative analysis shows that the bank distress amplifier doubles investment decline and increases the spread by 2.5 times during the Great Recession compared to a standard financial accelerator model. The mechanism helps explain how a seemingly small shock can sometimes trigger a large crisis.Publication Impact of Heat Waves on Learning Outcomes and the Role of Conditional Cash Transfers(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-14)This paper evaluates the impact of higher temperatures on learning outcomes in Peru. The results suggest that 1 degree above 20°C is equivalent to 7 and 6 percent of a standard deviation of what a student learns in a year for math and reading tests, respectively. These results hold true when the main specification is changed, splitting the sample, collapsing the data at school level, and using other climate specifications. The paper aims to improve understanding of how to deal with the impacts of climate change on learning outcomes in developing countries. The evidence suggests that conditional cash transfer programs can mitigate the negative effects of higher temperatures on students’ learning outcomes in math and reading.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Impacts of Disasters in Conflict Settings(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-12-10)This paper estimates the differentiated economic impact of natural hazard-related disasters (the specific disasters and climate shocks studied here being floods) when they occur in conflict versus non-conflict affected areas. Existing literature shows that disasters and climate shocks can cause significant distress to countries and people on an institutional and household level. However, assumptions are made that their impact tends to be larger in conflict-affected areas, with little evidence available on the differentiated extent of these damages. This paper investigates whether, and to what extent, the presence of conflicts has amplified the impacts of floods on economic activity and people, and hampered recovery. The paper applies a “top-down” approach to estimating the differential impacts of disasters and climate shocks between conflict and non-conflict affected areas using satellite-derived imagery of nightlight radiance as a proxy for economic activity, along with geospatial footprints of floods. The analysis considers two case studies: the 2019 tropical cyclones Idai and Kenneth and subsequent floods in Mozambique, and the July 2022 floods in Nigeria. Using difference-in-difference estimations, the analysis finds that there are significant differences in disaster and climate shock impacts and recovery between conflict and non-conflict affected areas. Particularly, there is a greater decline in economic activity and a longer recovery time in conflict affected areas, as proxied by the greater change in the intensity of nightlight radiance.Publication Unpacking the Disaster-FCV Nexus(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-09)This paper investigates the impact of conflicts on flood-affected households in Nigeria, utilizing a balanced panel dataset derived from the Living Standards Measurement Survey data collected in 2012, 2015, and 2018, and geo-spatial conflict data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project. The analysis employs difference-in-difference regressions to examine whether conflicts have a measurable effect on households and whether this effect is intensified when considering flood exposure. The study focuses on households' consumption expenditure outcomes, comparing conflict-affected and non-conflict-affected households, and further narrows down to flood-affected households. The results indicate that conflict-affected households experience lower consumption expenditure compared to non-conflict-affected households, with the adverse effects being significantly more pronounced for those also affected by floods. The study also investigates these effects on households’ income, albeit with a smaller sample. Similar findings, although less robust, were noted when analyzing income trends. The findings underscore the compounded vulnerabilities faced by households in conflict and flood-prone areas, highlighting the need for integrated policy interventions to address the compounded impacts of these shocks.Publication Revised Estimates of the Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Poverty by 2030(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-09)Thousands of scenarios are used to provide updated estimates for the impacts of climate change on extreme poverty in 2030. The range of the number of people falling into poverty due to climate change is between 32 million and 132 million in most scenarios. These results are commensurate with available estimates for the global poverty increase due to COVID-19. Socioeconomic drivers play a major role: optimistic baseline scenarios (rapid and inclusive growth with universal access to basic services in 2030) halve poverty impacts compared with the pessimistic baselines. Health impacts (malaria, diarrhea, and stunting) and the effect of food prices are responsible for most of the impact. The effect of food prices is the most important factor in Sub-Saharan Africa, while health effects, natural disasters, and food prices are all important in South Asia. These results suggest that accelerated action to boost resilience is urgent, and the COVID-19 recovery packages offer opportunities to do so.Publication Modeling the Impacts of Climate Change on Future Vietnamese Households(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-07)The impacts of climate change on poverty depend on the magnitude of climate change, but also on demographic and socioeconomic trends. An analysis of hundreds of baseline scenarios for future economic development in the absence of climate change in Vietnam shows that the main determinant of the eradication of extreme poverty by 2030 is the income of unskilled agriculture workers, followed by redistribution policies. Results from sector analyses of climate change impacts—in agriculture, health, and natural disasters—are introduced in each of the hundreds scenarios. By 2030 climate change is found to have a significant impact on poverty in Vietnam in about a quarter of the scenarios, with 400,000 to more than a million people living in extreme poverty just because of climate change impacts. Those scenarios in which climate change pushes the most people into poverty are scenarios with slow structural change away from agriculture, low productivity growth in agriculture, high population growth, and low redistribution levels. Conversely, in scenarios with rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development, climate change has no impact on extreme poverty, although it still has an impact on the income of the bottom 40 percent.Publication The Welfare of Syrian Households after a Decade of Conflict(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-05-30)Over the past decade, violent conflict has dramatically increased globally. By 2030, it is estimated that countries affected by fragility, conflict and violence will be home to up to two-thirds of the world’s extreme poor. The consequences of conflict on a country’s development are profound, affecting a wide range of outcomes both directly and indirectly. Several studies have shown how conflict affects a country’s growth, exacerbates poverty and hunger, and disrupts service delivery, ultimately leading to a deterioration of health and education outcomes. Assessing the impact of conflict is often hindered by data constraints. Information on the profile and welfare of populations in fragile and conflict-affected countries is severely constrained by data availability, as is the understanding of the immediate and long-term welfare consequences of conflict. The report aims to provide an assessment of some of the welfare consequences of the conflict in Syria. To the extent possible, given existing data limitations, the analysis presented in this report tries to highlight changes in selected welfare outcomes between the pre-conflict period (2000–10), and the summer of 2022, when the latest nationally representative survey was conducted under the Humanitarian Needs Assessment Programme (HNAP).1 The analysis presented in this report further highlights the important role that humanitarian agencies play not only in providing vital assistance to populations in emergency situations, but also in collecting data in challenging environments. Beside informing humanitarian operations, data collected by humanitarian actors can effectively be used to generate knowledge public goods along the humanitarian-development nexus. This report is structured as follows: Section 1 provides an overview of the Syrian conflict, aimed at providing the background context for the analysis presented in Sections 2, 3, and 4, which assess the impact of conflict on the demographic profile of the Syrian population, and on its labor market and human capital outcomes. Section 5 provides an assessment and profile of Syrian population welfare, both in terms of monetary poverty and non-monetary (multidimensional) outcomes, while Section 6 builds on the findings of the report to provide concluding remarks.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Mapping Impact in the Sahel(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-25)Enhancing resilience to climate change is an urgent imperative in the Sahel. Temperatures in the Sahel are rising 1.5 times faster than the global average, leading to extreme temperatures and more erratic and intense rainfall. Climate-related shocks are becoming more frequent and severe, particularly droughts and floods. These crises risk pushing 13.5 million more Sahelians into poverty by 2050 and deepening cycles of fragility and vulnerability, if urgent adaptation measures are not taken.Publication Mapping Impact In Chad(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-25)In the Sahel, Adaptive Social Protection (ASP) is a set of social protection policies, systems, and programs that promote human capital, productivity, and resilience of the poorest and strengthen their capacity to prepare for, cope with, and adapt to shocks. Through the delivery of regular social safety nets, productive inclusion interventions, and shock-responsive programs, ASP has demonstrated strong positive impacts on various dimensions in the Sahel. For the poorest and most vulnerable, it has resulted in improvements in household welfare and food security, productivity, and resilience. More broadly, it has shown significant positive impacts on the economy, society, and future generations.Publication Indonesia Economic Prospects, June 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-23)Indonesia’s economy remains resilient amid worsening global conditions. GDP grew at 4.9 percent year-on-year (yoy) in Q1-2025, slightly lower than previous post-pandemic quarters. Domestic demand was impacted by reduced government consumption and lower investment. Budget efficiency measures led to a contraction in public consumption, while investment in the construction and manufacturing sectors dipped due to investors’ concerns over domestic and global policy uncertainty. Meanwhile, declining commodity prices worsened Indonesia’s terms of trade. The supply side showed notable contributions from the agriculture and services sectors. Businesses and households are adjusting to economic uncertainty, but weak consumption of middle-class households has been persistent since the pandemic. The GOI structural reform agenda could accelerate growth further. In response to rising global policy uncertainty, the GOI devised a program of deregulation including reforms to the business environment and licensing, investment liberalization, trade and logistics reforms, and digital services. These reforms complement other reforms currently in play, like those related to financial sector deepening, and accompany the demand stimulus that the GOI is targeting through its priority programs. If implemented, these reforms could gradually expand the economy’s capacity, unlock further FDI, boost investment returns, and ensure productivity gains. The report suggests that this will translate into better job creation and raise GDP growth to 5.3-5.5 percent in 2026-2027. This report identifies the necessary steps to reach the target of providing 3 million housing units each year. In short, to meet the housing target and supercharge current efforts, the government needs to act as both a housing provider and a housing facilitator: instituting housing regulation reforms, accelerating public-funded housing programs, and creating an enabling environment that attracts private investment in Indonesia. Directly, 3.8 billion dollars in annual public investments can create an estimated 2.3 million jobs and mobilize 2.8 billion dollars in private capital. Reforms can create an enabling environment for housing investments and indirectly help multiply this impact.Publication Guidance Note(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-30)Children born in West African countries today are expected to reach 30 to 40 percent of their potential productivity in the future, due to poor health and education outcomes. Social safety net programs that include human capital accompanying measures are well placed to encourage household level investments in child health, nutrition, education, and development and strengthen the impact of social protection programs on human capital outcomes. Human capital accompanying measures, defined as communication activities that encourage investments in human capital, are widely implemented in West Africa. However, content and implementation modalities vary across countries, and need to take into account a variety of different factors to be effective and operational. This guidance note outlines the steps and considerations for developing human capital accompanying measures in West African countries, further standardising their design and implementation. It is designed to be a starting point for practitioners. Step-by-step guidance is provided on the development of content, identification of the recipient population, identification of service providers, design of program activities, and design of monitoring and evaluation systems. Each section details key considerations, the average timeline, stakeholders involved in each decision, and good practice from similar contexts. This guidance note concludes with an examination of two case studies of human capital accompanying measures that have proven to be effective and/or impactful in The Gambia and Mauritania.Publication Algeria Economic Update, Spring 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-06-20)Algeria’s economic growth remained robust in 2024 but is expected to slow moderately in 2025. Strong investment momentum and robust growth in household consumption, both fueled by government spending, supported manufacturing and services activity, while agricultural production accelerated. However, growth in domestic demand boosted imports, which, combined with lower hydrocarbon production and exports, weighed on growth. Overall, non-hydrocarbon GDP grew at a pace of 4.8 percent, offsetting the 1.4 percent contraction in GDP from hydrocarbons. Real GDP growth is projected at 3.3 percent in 2025, driven by the rebound in growth in the hydrocarbon sectors (+1.6 percent), boosted by the recovery of OPEC production quotas and gas production. Non-hydrocarbon growth is expected to slow (+3.6 percent), driven by the expected consolidation of public spending, which would be more marked for investment. Agricultural production is expected to remain robust despite limited rainfall, offsetting the slowdown in industry and services. The analysis of productivity trends in different sectors offers avenues for reflection to accelerate the structural transformation of the Algerian economy. The public-spending-led growth model resulted in important economic and social achievements in the 2000s, before slowing down in the last decade as the pace of spending growth became unsustainable. In doing so, this growth model has steered employment to low-value-added sectors, including non-commercial services and construction. In addition, a comparative analysis of Algerian productivity suggests a heterogeneous performance, with strong momentum in the agricultural sector contrasting with limited gains in the manufacturing sector. Thus, a growth acceleration could be achieved by increasing productivity gains in the manufacturing and services sectors, on the one hand, and a gradual reallocation of employment to high-value-added sectors on the other, combined with a gradual rebalancing of public spending. Such an economic transformation calls for targeted cross-cutting and sectoral policies to support growth and jobs in the private sector, while equipping workers with the necessary skills.