When Helping Hurts:
Growth, Adaptation, and a Critique of Ecowelfare

When Helping Hurts argues that modern welfare systems don’t just manage social risk; they also function as climate adaptation—what I call ecowelfare. Under crisis governance, repair often cycles back into markets—“growth-as-adaptation”—through temporary ecodecommodification of labor/land during disaster and recommodification in recovery.

While the dissertation is in long (book) format, it includes three empirical chapters:

1. Comparative computational analysis and symptomatic reading of 209 countries’ National Adaptation Plans to map state ideaologies and policy logics of adaptation;
2. Ecowelfare state typology of 62 countries using a global, SDG-based index of ecodecommodification and model-based clustering.
3. Causal, generalized synthetic control difference-in-differences study of the moderating effect of ecowelfare on growth after major U.S. hurricanes.

The aim of the dissertation is to develop a framework for ecosocial adaptation—-designing safety nets that meet need without defaulting to growth-as-adaptation.