Regional Development and Disaster Impacts in Indonesia

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between social and economic factors on the economic loss and number of victims of natural disaster occurring in Indonesia using a data set from 2004 to 2008 that consists 385 natural disaster events. The socio-economic factors used in this study are at provincial level. It found income as measured by GDRP per capita have negative impact on the number of deaths as well as in the number of houses destroyed. It also suggests that the impact of natural disasters can be lowered by enhancing not only economic development but also human development. Therefore, regional development should consider both of developments in order to reduce the impact of natural disasters. Other important finding of this study is the positive impact of government expenditure on the disaster impact related to the number of deaths. It means that larger local government expenditure will not guarantee the regions in reducing the impact of natural disasters. The positive impact of government size on the disaster impact is an interesting topic for a further study that may be related to other issue such as corruption in the distribution of aid regarding disasters. The study also suggests that further research may use other appropriate indicators of human development in estimating the benefit of human quality in reducing the impacts of natural disasters