A Framework for Quantifying Disaster Level Social Hardship: The case of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

We propose a supervised learning approach to statistically quantify the impact of an extreme event on vulnerable communities using publicly available panel data directly reflective of the different dimensions and manifestations of social hardship. These manifestations include suicides, substance abuse, excess mortality, unemployment, and others. Our modified treatment-effect model allows counterfactual baseline conditions to be posited for each …