Who Recovers? Gender, Coping Strategies, and the Psychological Costs of Cyclone Idai in Malawi

Natural disasters impose high and lasting psychological costs, yet the distribution of these costs within households remains poorly understood. Using a unique panel dataset of couples in Malawi, this paper examines the effect of Cyclone Idai damage on couples' mental health. We find that female spouses experience a 5.65% erosion in self‐efficacy five to seven months after the cyclone, while their husbands show no significant change. We find no significant effects on depression or stress‐related disability for either spouse. To explain this gender divergence in self‐efficacy, we investigate differential access to labour market coping strategies. Following severe cyclone‐related losses, husbands are 14.5% more likely to engage in wage employment and report 26.8% higher wage earnings relative to husbands in low‐loss households, whereas wives' participation in income‐generating activities remains unchanged. Together, these findings show that the psychological effects of the disaster are gender‐differentiated within the household, and differential labour market opportunities may explain the divergent psychological outcomes observed between spouses. These patterns have implications for the design of disaster response and social protection policies.