Impact of tropical cyclones on sustainable development through loops and cycles: evidence from select developing countries of Asia

Asian developing countries are frequently devastated by tropical cyclones. While the literature is replete with their impacts on economic growth, the impacts on critical sustainable development indicators, namely income inequality, health, and human capital accumulation, have seldom been explored. In this study, we measure the direct, indirect, and spillover impacts of tropical cyclones on the sustainable development of eight developing countries in Asia. This study uses the dynamic generalized method of moments model to estimate the impact of occurrences and casualties in these countries over 28 years. Our results indicate that recurrent tropical cyclones increase income inequality, reaching the threshold at 0.4 cyclone. The mortality rate tends to rise, which decreases after 2.5 cyclonic occurrences. Similarly, cyclones seem to initially reduce the expected years of schooling, which starts increasing after one cyclonic occurrence. These weakening impacts provide evidence of negative feedback loops. We also find evidence of domino effects and gender effects. The resilience factors are controlled for, as it helps the developing countries recover from the vicious cycles. The feedback loops can be broken by taking timely interventions, mitigation and adaptation.