Poverty Kills.(ISSUES & INSIGHTS)(EDITORIALS)(Editorial)

Disasters: Whatever terrors nature may throw your way, it's better to be in a rich country than in a poor one. There's a well-known way to make the poor richer -- and thus safer -- but it's surprisingly controversial.

We're speaking about capitalism, particularly the cross-border kind that goes by the "globalization" label.

There are many people, in both rich and poor nations, for whom that label signifies sweatshops and lost jobs, along with threats to indigenous cultures and local cuisine. But globalization, or the free global movement of goods and capital, is the most direct way for the people of those poor nations to tap into the wealth of the developed world and raise their standard of living. And as they get richer, they get safer.

The link between national wealth and relative safety, or between poverty and peril, shows up clearly in statistics. Rich nations set records for property damage, but the poorer lands have vastly higher death tolls. According to Red Cross and Red Crescent data, disasters in the 10 years up to 2003 killed an average of 44 people per event in countries of "high human development," while the average toll was 300 in nations of "low human development."

Consider Florida and Bangladesh. Both sit in the low-lying paths of violent tropical storms -- hurricanes and cyclones. Florida's worst such storm of recent decades, 1992's Hurricane Andrew, took 23 lives and caused $25 billion in damage. A 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh killed 150,000, half of what a 1970 storm killed.

California and Iran are both prone to earthquakes. In 1994, a 6.7quake in Los Angeles ...