Weather and Welfare: Health and Agricultural Impacts of Climate Extremes, Evidence from Mexico

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, its Board of Directors, or the countries they represent. Terms of use: Documents inThe unauthorized commercial use of Bank documents is prohibited and may be punishable under the Bank's policies and/or applicable laws. Copyright ©Inter-American Development Bank. This working paper may be reproduced for any non-commercial purpose. It may also be reproduced in any academic journal indexed by the American Economic Association's EconLit, with previous consent by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), provided that the IDB is credited and that the author(s) receive no income from the publication. Using data for all 2,454 municipalities of Mexico for the period 1980-2010, this paper analyzes the relationship between exposure to extreme temperatures and precipitation and death, as well as the relationship between severe weather and agricultural income and crop production in the country. It is found that extreme heat increases mortality, while the health effect of extreme cold is generally trivial. Precipitation extremes seem to affect the agricultural system, but their impact on mortality is ambiguous. More specifically, exchanging one day with a temperature of 16-18 °C for one day with temperatures higher than 30 °C increases the crude mortality rate by 0.15 percentage points, a result robust to several model specifications. It is also found that the extreme heat effect on death is significantly more acute in rural regions, leading to increases of up to 0.2 percentage points vis-à-vis a 0.07-point increase in urban areas. The timing of climate extremes is relevant: if a weather shock takes place during the agricultural growing season, the effects on mortality and agricultural output, productivity, prices, and crop yields are large and significant, but not so if such shocks occur during the non-growing season. Cataloging-in-PublicationJEL classifications: I12, Q12, Q51, Q54

Climate Change and Labour Allocation in Rural Mexico: Evidence from Annual Fluctuations in Weather

“…As the science of climate change has evolved, it has become clear that climate change will involve rising temperatures as well as changes in precipitation patterns. Motivated by a desire to understand the costs of climate change, a growing number of studies have examined the relationship between temperature and rainfall and health, agricultural production, economic growth and migration in less developed countries (Guiteras, ; Mendelsohn et al ., ; Dell et al ., ; Burgess et al ., ; Compean, ).…”

Assessing the Effects of Climate and Socioeconomic Factors on Vulnerability to Vector-Borne Diseases in Latin America

“…Indirectly, being infected with malaria or dengue will entail loss of working days, with subsequent impact on household incomegenerating capabilities. This is the income mechanism explored in Burgess et al (2011) and Guerrero (2013) for India and Mexico, respectively. In this paper we will not address effects of that type.…”

“…Several other papers have dealt with daily climatic data instead of monthly data (Burgess et al, 2011;Guerrero, 2013;Deschênes and Greenstone, 2011). Empirically, there are potential benefits and costs of using more aggregated data.…”

“…Several extreme event measures were tested. Previous literature suggests that climate extremes tend to have nonlinear effects over health outcomes (Curreiro et al, 2002;Deschênes and Moretti, 2007;Burgess et al, 2011;Guerrero 2013); all the alternatives presented below aim to account for this relevant feature. For each of the alternatives, a different propensity score model was estimated.…”

“…These effects are generally exacerbated in children and the elderly, the populations most vulnerable to these diseases. Several papers have aimed to quantify these effects (Guerrero, 2013;Burgess et al, 2011;WHO, 2003;Githeko et al, 2000;Molina, 2009;Patz et al, 2005;Deschênes and Moretti, 2007).…”