Natural disasters are inevitable, but humanitarian and economic losses are determined
largely by policy preferences and institutional underpinnings that shape the quality of public
infrastructure (including emergency responses and healthcare services) and govern business
practices and the adherence to building codes. This paper investigates whether corruption
increases the loss of human lives caused by natural disasters, using a broad panel of 135
countries during the period 1980–2020. The empirical analysis provides convincing evidence that
corruption increases the number of disaster-related deaths, after controlling for economic,
demographic, healthcare and institutional factors. That is, the higher the level of corruption in a
given country, the greater the number of fatalities as a share of population due to natural
disasters. Our results show that the devastating effect of corruption on loss of human lives
caused by natural disasters is significantly greater in developing countries, which are even more
susceptible to nonlinear effects of corruption.