The Economics of Polycrisis Prevention: Quantifying the Human and Economic Returns of Resilience
Recorded disaster loss is so lumpy that the worst 1% of country-years hold 58% of damage and 76% of deaths, so an early-warning investment worth four dollars per dollar on average recovers its cost in only 69% of decades; it would return $51 per dollar in rich countries but $0.5 in the poorest on assets alone, and aiming it at the riskiest tenth by past deaths halves the cost per life but still misses two thirds of later deaths.