Send message to Author

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the impact of social vulnerabilities on climate-related health risks and adaptive capacities to these risks among informal workers in Vietnam by analysing a survey of 400 respondents using logistic and linear regression, highlighting the reproduction of social vulnerabilities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the impact of social vulnerabilities on climate-related health risks among four types of informal workers, namely street vendors, motorbike taxi riders, porters, and construction workers in four Vietnamese cities, including Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Da Nang, and Can Tho. Using logistic and linear regression to analyse a survey of over 400 informal workers, this paper assesses the statistical associations between workers’ economic, cultural, and other social vulnerabilities with their climate-related health risks and adaptive capacities to these risks.

First, we found that social vulnerabilities exacerbate climate-related health risks. Workers with underlying medical conditions, belonging to ethnic minorities, and from less developed cities are more likely to face both physical and mental health problems, notably depression and anxiety. Second, we found that social vulnerabilities limit adaptive capacities to climate-related health risks. Workers with underlying medical conditions, lower education levels, lower incomes, and who are more senior have less resources to respond to these risks, often remaining medically uninsured or less digitally literate. Third, we found that climate-related health risks reproduce social vulnerabilities. Workers with underlying medical conditions, belonging to ethnic minorities, coming from less developed cities, and who are more senior pay double to over quadruple the costs to deal with climate-related health risks, reducing their disposable income and reproducing their intersectional marginalisations in society. These findings suggest that in a ‘risk society’, environmental risks are unequally distributed not only along class distinctions but also along other fault lines, notably health, education, ethnicity, age, and city of origin.