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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
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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 

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