Natural Disasters and Household Labor Force Participation in Mexico

Catalina Murillo, El Colegio de México
Landy Sanchez, El Colegio de México

Mexico is vulnerable to natural disasters because of its geography and poor infrastructure; however, there is limited knowledge about household coping strategies. We investigate whether households adjust their labor force participation as a consequence of extreme weather events. Using longitudinal data from the Mexican Family Life Survey (MxFLS) and the Disaster Information Management System (DesInventar) we consider community and household-level effects. We examine two arguments: a) household labor force adjusts depending on the disruption of local labor markets, but low-skill households will be positively impacted due to reconstruction efforts; and; b) household needs, due to assets losses, will decrease labor force participation beyond local labor conditions. With a multilevel model we analyze: 1) disasters impacts on assets losses and changes on labor force; 2) disasters impacts through community infrastructure affectation; 3) if household effects depend on the degree of community disruption, and whether these differ by household socioeconomic status.