Dr Nkechi Owoo, University of Ghana
Verdon Smith International Seminar Room, First Floor, Royal Fort House
Dr Owoo's talk will reflect on three critical issues of the 21st Century: health, climate change and inequality.
The world’s temperature has already increased by over 1.2°C, with significant health implications. In Ghana, with an average annual temperature of 28°C, the effects of climate change are apparent. Since the 1960s, the number of hot days and nights have increased by about 13% and 20%, respectively. Rainfall patterns have also become increasingly irregular, triggering floods, droughts and heatwaves, with natural disasters predicted to increase in frequency in the future.
This paper uses data from three waves of the Ghana Socioeconomic Panel Survey (2009, 2014, 2018), combined with climate shocks data from Geocoded Disasters (GDIS) Dataset for corresponding periods, to explore the effects of climate vulnerability and shocks on mental health in Ghana. Heterogeneous effects are examined across gender, rural/urban residence and poverty status. Spatial maps are also used to illustrate significant spatial clustering of climate change shocks and vulnerabilities across the country.
Dr Owoo is visiting on the Bristol Next Generation Visiting Researcher Programme, her IRP web profile can be viewed here.
Dr Owoo is a key member of the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) African Centre of Excellence for Inequality Research (ACEIR). She has played a leading role in the UKRI ARUA funded Transforming Social Inequalities Through Inclusive Climate Action (TSITICA) project which investigates how climate change action can be socially transformative in three contrasting African countries: Ghana, Kenya and South Africa.
She is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economics at the University of Ghana and a Senior Research Fellow at the Environment for Development Institute. She is a Fellow at Future Africa, University of Pretoria and represents the Africa region on the Council of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) for the period 2022 – 2025. After her fellowship visit at Bristol, she will be working at the World Bank in Washington DC for the next year.
Her research focuses on spatial econometrics in addition to microeconomic issues in developing countries, including household behaviour, health, poverty and inequality, gender issues, population and demographic economics, as well as environmental sustainability.
please email irp-admin@bristol.ac.uk
