Hurricanes upend lives and destroy wealth, but leave little lasting imprint on the broader economy.
That is one of the main takeaways from an examination of the economic effects of storms in recent years.
Read: Evacuating due to Hurricane Florence? Include these items in you ‘financial go-bag’
With Hurricane Florence hitting the U.S. East Coast, and potentially more storms to come in the weeks ahead, it is a time to assess the economic impacts of natural disasters.
Hurricane Harvey last year flooded the nation’s fourth-largest city by population, Houston, destroying $125 billion worth of property, according to estimates by Moody’s Analytics Inc. But lost economic output was just $8.5 billion, a barely perceptible sliver of more than $19 trillion of national economic output, according to Moody’s.
An expanded version of this report is available on WSJ.com.
Also popular on WSJ.com:
Cord-Cutters Beware: Streaming TV Prices Are Marching Higher
The Billion-Dollar Mystery Man and the Wildest Party Vegas Ever Saw
Providing critical information for the U.S. trading day. Subscribe to MarketWatch's free Need to Know newsletter. Sign up here.
