Earthquakes affect rich and poor countries alike, yet the poorest countries and communities typically suffer more profoundly. The disproportionate vulnerability of the world's most poorly developed nations to earthquake activity was laid bare by the Haiti earthquake in January 2010. The magnitude-7 quake occurred close to Haiti's capital city, Port-au-Prince, with a population of about 940,000; estimates of the death toll from the quake range from 100,000 to 300,000. For comparison, the magnitude-6.9 earthquake that struck the 1.5-million-inhabitant city of Kobe, Japan in 1995 caused less than 6,500 fatalities. Of course, no two earthquakes are the same, but the difference in impact is striking: wealth, and hence preparedness, in a country can help protect greatly from earthquake damage.

Wealth of individuals does not necessarily provide such a buffer, as is highlighted by an examination of neighbourhood compositions in Los Angeles, California. Here, comparing the distribution of social groups with the locations of known active faults did not reveal an exposure of socially vulnerable communities to the greatest seismic hazards, as expected (N. A. Toké et al., Earth's Future 2, 440–457; 2014). Instead, the houses owned by the richest residents of Los Angeles turned out to be closest to some of the city's most active faults.

The cause could be traced to the Alquist-Priolo Earthquake Fault Zoning Act, which prohibits the construction of new houses in California close to the surface trace of known active faults. Intended to create buffer zones around areas of high seismic risk, the building restriction led to urban developments with much open green space and park land. The seismic hazard in these areas is known, but the risk seems to have been outweighed by the amenities of living next to park land.

Social status and vulnerability to seismic shaking was also found to be less straightforward than expected in the Haiti earthquake (M. K. Lindell, Nature Geosci. 3, 739–740; 2010). Middle-class dwellings, rather than the poorest neighbourhoods, were damaged most severely. Expensive houses that were designed to withstand earthquakes performed well. But, so too did the shanty houses. The lightness of these small huts, made of wood with corrugated metal roofs, made them resistant to shaking. In contrast, many of the concrete-based middle-class houses collapsed during the quake.

Poverty and vulnerability to natural disasters are undeniably linked at the national scale. But at the individual level, some people choose to ignore unlikely, but devastating events and buy themselves into risk.