Regional inequality and polarization in the context of concurrent extreme weather and economic shocks

This study examines how extreme weather influences regional inequality and polarization within Mozambique in the context of on-going economic shocks. Utilizing satellite-based estimates of rainfall spatially analyzed within a GIS, we establish a 16-year rainfall climatology and calculate monthly rainfall anomalies for 665 villages. We approximate storm-total rainfall from all tropical cyclones entering the Mozambique Channel, as well as the extent of damaging winds for those making landfall, between 2005 and 2008. We group villages according to tropical cyclone impacts and use hierarchical cluster analysis to group the remaining villages according to shared patterns of monthly rainfall anomalies. Using economic data from the 2005 and 2008 National Agricultural Surveys of Mozambique, we relate weather patterns associated with near normal rainfall, tropical cyclones, flooding, and drought to changes in inequality and polarization by conducting decomposition analyses of the Gini index and Duclos-Esteban-Ray (DER) polarization index. Our findings mainly correspond to the generally accepted view that weather shocks exacerbate existing income and power disparities within societies. However, in some cases we find evidence that inequality and polarization can decline in the aftermath of an extreme event, and increase even where the weather is relatively good. By identifying varying effects of extreme events on inequality and polarization at subnational level, our study enables a more detailed understanding of weather-related effects on socio-economic outcomes in rural societies rapidly integrating into the global economy.