LAUSR

Mental health has been recently declared a global priority by the World Bank and World Health Organization. This article investigates the existence of heterogeneous effects of experiencing natural disasters on mental health. Using population representative longitudinal data from Australia, we find that home owners generally show a reduction in mental health score after a disaster. While the average effect for those that do not own a home is zero, surprisingly, the quantile treatment panel approach reveals the existence of a strong effect that varies from negative to positive across the distribution of mental health. The results suggest that policies targeted at homeowners and the lowest mental health non-owners (rather than only at the economically poorest) would help mitigate mental health consequences attributable to natural disaster exposure.