severely affected households. Household losses were almost entirely composed of asset losses and housing repairs, with indirect losses through health impacts or missed days of work contributing only marginally to total losses. On average, affected households lost 509 cedis due to the flood, representing about 4% of the value of the average annual household expenditures. But these average numbers belie large heterogeneities in the affected population: only 54% of affected households lost more than 1% of total annual household expenditure. The proportions of affected households that lost more than 5% and 10% are respectively 21% and 10%. Poorer households were more vulnerable to the 2015 floods, in the sense that they lost a larger fraction of their annual expenditure than their richer neighbors. For instance, households from the poorest quartile were 60% more likely than the average household to lose more than 10% of their income. The large heterogeneity in losses and higher vulnerability of poorer people means that the average asset loss per household is a very poor indicator of the well-being impact on households.

Socio-economic resilience: 31% of all affected households report not having recovered two years after the shock. The ability of households to recover from the 2015 flood was driven by the magnitude of their losses, their source of income, and their access to coping mechanisms, such as borrowing and remittances. In the case of Accra slums, the households’ ability to recover was not affected by their poverty, as measured by the annual expenditure level and when controlling for other factors. In other terms, poorer households struggle more to recover, but mostly because they have lower access to coping mechanisms and experience larger (relative) losses, not because their income is lower. Households that lost more than 5% of their annual expenditures were 40% less likely to recover within two years, as compared to households that experienced lower relative losses. Few households seem to have relied on negative coping strategies such as reducing food intake below basic needs. Formal assistance played a very minor role.

Behaviors: There is a measurable effect of the 2015 flood on economic behaviors, undermining savings and enterprise investment. Affected households are found to prioritize investments in their house at the expense of their business, which suggests that flood risks could represent an obstacle to economic activity and development, beyond the direct effects through asset and income losses. Flood management could thus generate more benefits than usually estimated, by promoting investments in addition to avoiding losses. The Triple Dividend report refers to this benefit as the “second dividend of disaster risk reduction” (ODI and GFDRR, 2015).<sup>1</sup> However, these results remain preliminary and further research – including through dedicated surveys – would be needed to reach more conclusive results on this issue.

This study focused on the 2015 floods, and it remains challenging to generalize the findings, or derive general conclusions for flood management and the provision of post-flood assistance. However, these four findings translate into two policy implications.

First, relatively poor people suffer more than their neighbors from flooding, which suggests that flood management can be particularly beneficial for poorer households and thus could be considered as a component of the poverty-reduction strategy in the city. Further, the higher impact of the 2015 flood on poorer people seems to be mostly due to their higher vulnerability, linked to the nature and quality of their assets. In addition to usual flood management actions aiming at reducing flood frequency and magnitude

> 1 The first dividend is that disaster losses can be avoided, and the third dividend refers to co-benefits such as when a water retention area can also be used as a recreation park or a dike is combined with a road.

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