PIRE: Climate risk, pollution, and childhood inequalities in low- and middle-income countries

人们对加速的气候变化及其对儿童健康和福利的影响的担忧正在迅速增加。在最近的一份新闻稿中，联合国儿童基金会(儿基会)估计，约有10亿儿童面临气候危机影响的极高风险；许多儿童将经历多重气候冲击，加上水、卫生和医疗保健等基本服务的匮乏。与此同时，虽然许多高收入国家和一些中等收入国家的空气污染正在减少，但在世界上大多数儿童居住的低收入和中等收入国家的大片地区，空气污染仍然很高。来自较贫穷国家和国家内经济和社会边缘群体的儿童可能特别容易受到气候和环境危害的影响。到目前为止，还没有一项全球研究表明，极端气候和空气污染暴露的不良影响在多大程度上由儿童根据个人、家庭和整个国家的特点而不同地承担。该项目以低收入和中等收入国家为重点，促进和传播关于全球儿童不平等如何造成经历气候危害和极端空气污染的风险及其一旦暴露的影响的科学知识。项目合作伙伴包括宾夕法尼亚大学和休斯顿大学的教职员工和学生，以及亚洲开发银行、美洲开发银行、加纳区域人口研究所、联合国儿童基金会和世界银行的研究人员。这些研究伙伴关系将为分析提供信息，并为向能够支持干预措施或就政策提供咨询意见的利益攸关方传播研究结果提供直接支持。此外，这些合作将为不同的学生群体和新兴学者提供全球参与和培训机会。该项目建立了大学-国际机构合作，以调查全球儿童不平等如何影响气候和环境危害暴露的风险；一旦暴露影响；以及缓冲不良影响的能力。这些合作将促进数据共享、协作分析、学术研究人员和政策界之间的反馈，以及对未来几代跨学科人口科学家的培训。项目小组将把人口、环境和气候危害数据联系起来，并考虑按家庭、社区和国家的社会经济状况(SES)、人口群体、性别和健康/营养状况定义的不同群体之间可能存在的差异。我们将应用新的基于群体的气候/环境措施来调查环境风险在交叉的区域和社会人口群体中的分布模式。此外，该小组将采用统计和机器学习技术，在给定观察到的社会经济地位和人口特征的情况下，沿着儿童人力资本成果的全面分布调查气候/环境风险的异质性影响。最后，该团队将开发可访问的数据门户，为政策制定者、研究人员和感兴趣的公民提供经常更新的实时全球和区域地图，这些地图反映了环境、人口和人力资本轴在时间和空间上的不平等变化模式。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Concern is rapidly increasing about accelerating climate changes and their implications for the health and welfare of children. In a recent press release, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimates that approximately one billion children are at extremely high risk of experiencing impacts of the climate crisis; many will experience multiple climate shocks combined with poor essential services such as water, sanitation and healthcare. At the same time, while air pollution is decreasing in many high-income countries and some middle-income countries, it remains very high in large areas of low- and middle-income countries in which the majority of the world’s children reside. Children from poorer countries and from economically and socially marginalized groups within countries may be particularly vulnerable to climatic and environmental hazards. To date, there has not been a global study of the degree to which the ill effects of extreme climate and air pollution exposures are borne differently by children according to individual, family, and overall country characteristics. Focusing on low- and middle-income countries, this project advances and disseminates scientific knowledge about how global childhood inequalities condition both the risks of experiencing climate hazards and extreme air pollution and the implications, once exposed. Project partners include faculty members and students at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Houston and researchers at the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Regional Institute for Population Studies in Ghana, UNICEF, and the World Bank. These research partnerships will inform analyses and provide direct support for dissemination of findings to stakeholders in a position to support interventions or advise on policy. In addition, these collaborations will provide global engagement and training opportunities to a diverse group of students and emerging scholars.This project establishes university-international agency collaborations to investigate how global childhood inequalities condition risks of climatic and environmental hazards exposure; implications, once exposed; and capacity to buffer ill effects. These collaborations will facilitate data-sharing, collaborative analysis, feedback between academic researchers and the policy community, and training for future generations of interdisciplinary population scientists. The project team will link population, environmental, and climate hazard data and consider possible differences across groups defined by household, community, and country socioeconomic status (SES), demographic group, gender, and health/nutrition status. We will apply novel group-based climate/environmental measures to investigate the distributional patterns of ambient risks among intersecting regional and sociodemographic groups. In addition, the team will adopt statistical and machine learning techniques to investigate the heterogeneous effects of climate/environmental risks along the full distribution of child human capital outcomes given observed SES and demographic characteristics. Finally, the team will develop accessible data portals that will provide policy makers, researchers, and interested citizens with frequently updated and real-time global and regional maps of changing patterns of inequalities along the environment, population, and human capital axes across time and space.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.