Drought and Economic Resilience of Oklahoma Counties
Abstract
Understanding the impact of climate variability and economic resilience to extreme climate variability is essential to managing community resources and setting policy for Oklahoma. In this research, it has been hypothesized that community capitals play a vital role to make Oklahoma counties economically resilient to climate variability. A climate variability index is used to identify historical drought events across Oklahoma counties between 1996 and 2012. Economic resilience of Oklahoma counties is measured by economic decline and recovery during and after a drought period. Finally, proxies for seven types of community capital are used to explain the variance in the economic resilience of Oklahoma counties. This research has found that natural and financial capitals contribute to income resilience and cultural capital contributes to employment resilience of Oklahoma. On the other hand, political capital has a negative and statistically significant impact on income resilience, while both physical and financial capitals have a negative and statistically significant impact on employment resilience. Human capital has been found to have a mixed impact on both income and employment resilience.
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- OSU Theses [15752]