Household-level Recovery after Floods in a Developing Country: Further Evidence from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan

Based on a second survey of villages and households one year after a pilot survey, we analyze the household-level recovery process from damage due to floods in Pakistan in 2010. With regard to initial recovery from flood damage, we find that households who had initially fewer assets and were hit by greater flood damage had more difficulty in recovering. After one year, the overall recovery had improved, but there remained substantial variation across households regarding the extent of recovery. Initially rich households were associated with faster recovery than other households at the time of the second survey, but the speed of recovery declined during the most recent year. The overall pattern appears to indicate that the village economy was turning towards the initial regime, where the income distribution was characterized by a large mass of households whose welfare and asset levels were around the income poverty line and a small middle class of households whose asset levels were sufficiently high to ensure a welfare level above the poverty line.