Charles Kenny reviews the stats:
[A]round 90 percent of the 60,000 people who die in natural disasters each year die in the developing world.
That’s because surviving natural disasters is expensive. The best disaster resilience strategies involve paying for infrastructure—from sea walls to all-weather roads to irrigation systems—and solidly constructed buildings, alongside quality public services such as fire fighting, police, and ambulances. And withstanding a catastrophe requires being able to afford food and medicine even if prices for such goods rise in times of scarcity. Look at food scarcity from droughts: We’ve known since economist Amartya Sen’s Nobel prize-winning work that the best way to stop people dying in a famine is to make sure they have enough money to buy food.
The Dish 