Our measure of drought involved identifying the !fth percentile (or within the lowest 5% of rainfall records) rainfall de!ciency relative to the long-term average for the speci!c area. In other words, the monthly gridded rainfall de!ciency recorded as being at or below the !fth percentile for 12-month rolling grids, from Jan 2000 to Dec 2014, was used to de!ne whether an area of the MDB was classi!ed as in drought. Weather and climate data were then matched to date and location of respondents.