A strong body of evidence provides a compelling case that the current policy response to disasters—sudden, calamitous events that cause losses that exceed a community’s or society’s ability to cope using its own resources—is inadequate. This brief reviews the evidence on the welfare impacts of proactive approaches to setting up finance for disaster response.

This paper examines the evidence on how to prepare better for disasters, specifically the evidence on the welfare impacts of interventions that pre-arrange finance for disaster response. We find that the quality of evidence is mixed across this space.