Disaster losses and modernization: A study on the cases of earthquake and storm disaster

On the basis of statistical analysis of the earthquake and storm disaster data, we report that quantities which are significantly correlated to economic level of a country might not be the number of deaths and economic losses, or their respective share in the total population and total output, but the ease degree of making changes in economic losses and deaths. If D, F represent economic losses and deaths, respectively, then the parameter |D₂-D₁|/|F₂-F₁| can well express this relative degree, that is, the ratio of change magnitude of economic losses to deaths, which have an evident positive correlation with per capita GDP in a form of power law.