학술논문

The Poverty Impacts of Labor Heat Stress in West Africa Under a Warming Climate
Document Type
article
Source
Earth's Future, Vol 10, Iss 11, Pp n/a-n/a (2022)
Subject
economic impacts
heat stress‐related labor capacity losses
poverty
computable general equilibrium
household microsimulations
Environmental sciences
GE1-350
Ecology
QH540-549.5
Language
English
ISSN
2328-4277
Abstract
Abstract This paper assesses the poverty implications of heat stress‐related labor capacity losses based on simulations using a global general equilibrium economic model. Compared with past studies, we use a more precise measurement of heat stress, assign labor capacity losses to specific labor types by sector, and employ an economic model that contains highly disaggregated economic sectors and regions. This model allows us to determine global and regional economic impacts that account for international dependencies. We focus attention on seven West African countries for which we determine the implied changes in real incomes of households near the poverty line. For these countries, we use household microsimulations to determine potential impacts on the poverty headcount. In our results, poverty impacts are heterogeneous across countries and earning sources‐based household strata. A key channel behind this heterogeneity is how loss of labor productivity affects the relative returns to factors of production. We find that unskilled agricultural wages could increase, as loss of productivity in the face of inelastic food demand induces increased labor demand in order to dampen agricultural output losses. In our experiments, even neglecting potential increases in mortality and morbidity, poverty increases range from 2.3% in Cameroon to up to 7.2%–9.2% in Ghana and Nigeria. In one of the seven countries considered, Guinea, poverty sees little change due to the mitigating effects of rising labor wages.