Income and floods in New Zealand

Floods include some of the most frequent and costliest extreme weather events in Aotearoa New Zealand. Using data from Statistics New Zealand’s Integrated Data Infrastructure and Historical Weather Events Catalogue from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), this study empirically investigates the impact of floods on individual income across the country. The study considered thirteen economically significant flood events and the income of all the Inland Revenue registered individuals between 2000 and 2019. The impact of floods on the affected individual’s annual income was assessed using panel regressions with individual and time-fixed effects. Despite the large floods-induced privately insured damages, floods had no significant impact on individual annual incomes from salary, wage, self-employment, and total income across various specifications.