Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-lrblm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T12:15:20.587Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Households and heat stress: estimating the distributional consequences of climate change

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2018

Jisung Park ,
Mook Bangalore ,
Stephane Hallegatte Open the ORCID record for Stephane Hallegatte [Opens in a new window]  and
Evan Sandhoefner
Jisung Park
Affiliation:
Department of Public Policy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Mook Bangalore*
Affiliation:
Grantham Research Institute and Department of Geography and Environment, London School of Economics, UK Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, World Bank, USA
Stephane Hallegatte
Affiliation:
Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery, World Bank, USA
Evan Sandhoefner
Affiliation:
Harvard College, Cambridge, MA, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: M.Bangalore@lse.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Recent research documents the adverse causal impacts on health and productivity of extreme heat, which will worsen with climate change. In this paper, we assess the current distribution of heat exposure within countries, to explore possible distributional consequences of climate change through temperature. Combining survey data from 690,745 households across 52 countries with spatial data on climate, this paper suggests that the welfare impacts of added heat stress may be regressive within countries. We find: (1) a strong negative correlation between household wealth and warmer temperature in many hot countries; (2) a strong positive correlation between household wealth and warmer temperatures in many cold countries; and (3) that poorer individuals are more likely to work in occupations with greater exposure. While our analysis is descriptive rather than causal, our results suggest a larger vulnerability of poor people to heat extremes, and potentially significant distributional and poverty implications of climate change.

Keywords

Climate changeexposureheat stresslabor productivitypovertyE24Q54Q50I32
Type
Research Article
Information
Environment and Development Economics , Volume 23 , Special Issue 3: Poverty and Climate Change , June 2018 , pp. 349 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Acemoglu, D and Dell, M (2010) Productivity differences between and within countries. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 2(1), 169–188.Google Scholar
Albouy, D, et al. (2016) Climate amenities, climate change, and American quality of life. Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 3(1), 205–246.Google Scholar
Annan, F and Schlenker, W (2015) Federal crop insurance and the disincentive to adapt to extreme heat. The American Economic Review 105(5), 262–266.Google Scholar
Barreca, A, et al. (2016) Adapting to climate change: the remarkable decline in the US temperature-mortality relationship over the twentieth century. Journal of Political Economy 124(1), 105–159.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Behrer, A and Park, J (2017) Will we adapt? Temperature, labor, and adaptation to climate change in the United States. Harvard Kennedy School Discussion Paper 16–81.Google Scholar
Daoud, A, Halleröd, B and Guha-Sapir, D (2016) What is the association between absolute child poverty, poor governance, and natural disasters? A global comparison of some of the realities of climate change. PLoS ONE 11(4), e0153296.Google Scholar
Davis, LW, Fuchs, A and Gertler, P (2014) Cash for coolers: evaluating a large-scale appliance replacement program in Mexico. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 6(4), 207–238.Google Scholar
Dell, M, Jones, BF and Olken, BA (2014) Temperature shocks and economic growth: evidence from the last half century. American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 4(3), 66–95.Google Scholar
Deryugina, T and Hsiang, SM (2014) Does the environment still matter? Daily temperature and income in the United States. NBER Working Paper No. 20750. National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
EM-DAT (2017) The International Disaster Database. Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters – CRED. Louvain, Belgium: University of Louvain.Google Scholar
Guha-Sapir, D and Santos, I (2013) The Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hallegatte, S, et al. (2016) Shock Waves: Managing the Impacts of Climate Change on Poverty. Climate Change and Development Series, Washington, DC: World Bank.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heal, G and Park, J (2016) Temperature stress and the direct impact of climate change: a review of an emerging literature. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy 10(2), 1–17.Google Scholar
Horowitz, JK (2009) The income–temperature relationship in a cross-section of countries and its implications for predicting the effects of global warming. Environmental and Resource Economics 44(4), 475–493.Google Scholar
Hsiang, SM (2016) Climate econometrics. Annual Review of Resource Economics 8, 43–75.Google Scholar
NOAA (2015) India heat wave kills thousands. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Available at https://www.climate.gov/news-features/event-tracker/india-heat-wave-kills-thousands.Google Scholar
Roback, J (1982) Wages, rents, and the quality of life. Journal of Political Economy 90(6), 1257–1278.Google Scholar
Sachs, JD (2001) Tropical underdevelopment. NBER Working Paper No. 8119. National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Seppanen, O, Fisk, WJ and Lei, Q (2006) Effect of Temperature on Task Performance in Office Environment. Berkeley, USA: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Environmental Energy Technologies Division, Indoor Environment Department.Google Scholar
Sinha, P, Cropper, ML and Caulkins, M (2015) Household Location Decisions and the Value of Climate Amenities. NBER Working Paper No 21826. Cambridge, USA: National Bureau of Economic Research.Google Scholar
Sudarshan, A, et al. (2015) The impact of temperature on productivity and labor supply-evidence from Indian manufacturing. Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics Working Paper 244.Google Scholar
USAID (2013) Demographic and Health Surveys Methodology: Standard Recode Manual for DHS 6. United States Agency for International Development. Available at https://www.dhsprogram.com/pubs/pdf/DHSG4/Recode6_DHS_22March2013_DHSG4.pdf.Google Scholar
Winsemius, H, et al. (2015) Disaster Risk, Climate Change, and Poverty: Assessing the Global Exposure of Poor People to Floods and Droughts. World Bank Working Paper No 7480. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
World Bank (2017) World Development Indicators. Washington, DC: World Bank.Google Scholar
Zivin, JG and Neidell, M (2014) Temperature and the allocation of time: implications for climate change. Journal of Labor Economics 32(1), 1–26.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Park et al. supplementary material 1

Online Appendix

Download Park et al. supplementary material 1(PDF)
PDF 996 KB