Yusi Ouyang, Ph.D.

About

Yusi Ouyang studies the interrelationships among poverty, growth, and inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa. She also studied ethnic inequality in China. Her research is published in scholarly journals including World Development and Journal of African Economies. Yusi also serves as a resource person for the African Economic Research Consortium, a Kenya-based research and training institution with alumni serving in central banks, ministries of finance, economic departments of universities and policy research institutes across Sub-Sahara Africa.

Yusi was born in China’s Yunnan province, where 25 ethnic minority groups make up 35 percent of the province’s population. In her teen years, she spent multiple summers in Yunnan’s ethnic Dai villages watching her uncle making ethnic documentary films and became very interested in ethnic minority people and disadvantaged populations in general. This interest eventually led her to development economics, after earning a bachelor’s degree in accounting from North China University of Technology, and master’s degrees in both British studies and economics and management science from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in Germany.