I don’t think we disagree much if any—my next point was that the people in these areas had decided to live there prior to and independently of GiveDirectly’s action. To the extent they were engaging in a cost-benefit analysis, the current residents had already decided it was worth the flooding risk.
At least in Florida, my understanding is that many of the more at-risk properties would not have been built at all (or at least re-built) but for the government subsidized insurance covering the bulk of losses with very high probability. Between the size of the GD payments, and the small fraction of flooded people who receive them, an analogous effect here seems unlikely to me.
I don’t think we disagree much if any—my next point was that the people in these areas had decided to live there prior to and independently of GiveDirectly’s action. To the extent they were engaging in a cost-benefit analysis, the current residents had already decided it was worth the flooding risk.
At least in Florida, my understanding is that many of the more at-risk properties would not have been built at all (or at least re-built) but for the government subsidized insurance covering the bulk of losses with very high probability. Between the size of the GD payments, and the small fraction of flooded people who receive them, an analogous effect here seems unlikely to me.