(e.g., with improved drainage), a _poverty-focused_ flood management policy should therefore focus on the building stock (to increase the housing quality for poorer people) and financial inclusion (to help people save in a form that is not vulnerable to floods).

Second, building resilience is not only about increasing income: it also requires providing the population with access to coping and recovery mechanisms, such as assistance and financial tools, and more stable income sources. It means that traditional poverty reduction instruments –with targeting based on poverty indicators – may not cover all the households who suffer from long-term consequences of floods. A resilience-building program needs (1) to target _low-resilience_ households, such as those with little access to coping and recovery mechanisms, including those who are not living in poverty; and (2) to provide households with coping mechanisms like savings opportunities and access to borrowing, while promoting the development of stable sources of income.

# **2. Contribution to the literature**

It is well documented that shocks represent a major cause of falling into poverty (Hulme and Shepherd, 2003; Quisumbing, 2007; Moser, 2008; Baulch, 2011). And shocks can have long lasting impacts, especially on children, in the presence of negative coping strategies such as selling off assets, reduction in caloric consumption, or lower investment in education (Carter, et al., 2007; Skoufias, 2003). The risk of a ‘disaster-poverty trap’ – or at least long-term impacts – is exacerbated if the affected households have limited external support and lack access to coping strategies such as savings or insurance (Carter et al., 2007; Dang, et al., 2014; McCarthy, et al., 2017; Arouri, et al., 2015; Hallegatte et al., 2017). For these reasons, it is particularly important to better identify the population affected by disasters, understand how various people suffer from different types and magnitudes of losses, and assess the ability of different populations to cope with and recover from natural disasters.

The scarce (but growing) literature on the relationship between poverty and the exposure and vulnerability to natural disasters suggests that these dynamics are highly context specific. This study on Accra and the 2015 floods contributes to the body of evidence on this issue, by focusing on a major urban flood in an African city.<sup>2</sup> It is interesting to ask whether poor people are overrepresented in the population affected by the 2015 flood because there are few surveys considering this question, and they suggest that poor people are often but not always overrepresented among the people affected by disasters (Hallegatte, et al., 2017). In Tuvalu, for example, Taupo et al. (2017) found that poorer households were more likely to reside in areas highly exposed to disasters. And in Vietnam, Narloch and Bangalore (2016) find that poor people in urban areas were significantly more likely to live in areas with a higher risk of floods. But Noy and Patel (2014) found that non-poor households were more exposed to the 2011 flood in Thailand. In Kenya, Opundo (2013) did not find a relationship between income and exposure for floods in the Bunyala District. This diversity of findings is consistent with the findings of Winsemius et al. (2017), who conclude that only in some countries are poorer people more likely to live in a flood zone than their richer neighbors. Our study confirms that – in contrast to what is often considered obvious – there are cases where

> 2 A World Bank report on urban floods in Antananarivo using a similar methodology is forthcoming.