Climate change, air pollution and inequalities in exposure and vulnerability

• Department of Political and Social Sciences

PhD thesis defence by Risto Conte Kaivabu.

Climate change poses new risks for global public health, but some subpopulations are in higher danger. Extreme temperatures and air pollution are tightly related to climate change and main sources of environmental hazard due to their detrimental effect on several important life outcomes. Moreover, current social inequalities often map existing or emerging environmental inequalities. In my PhD thesis, I contribute to the burgeoning literature interested on the population consequences of climate change and socioeconomic inequalities with four chapters. In the first and second chapter, I study how socioeconomic status moderates the effect of extreme temperatures on birth outcomes and mortality in Spain. In the third chapter, I focus on disparities in the exposure to air pollution at schools in Italy. In the fourth chapter, I inquire how a policy improving air quality in London benefitted children school attendance. Overall, the thesis shows socioeconomic status to importantly affect vulnerability to environmental risks with concerning implications on how climate change could affect existing social inequalities in the future.

Risto Conte Keivabu is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence (Italy). He attained his BA in Political Science: International politics and history at the University of Padova (Italy) and attended an MA in Comparative Public Policies and Welfare Studies at the University of Southern Denmark (Denmark). 

His PhD thesis inquires how sociodemographic characteristics of a population shape vulnerability and exposure to extreme temperatures and air pollution. Currently, he has started working at the Max Plack Institute of Demographic Research (MPIDR) as a postdoc in the Digital and Demography Lab on topics related to Population and Environment.