Cumulative Demographic and Health Effects of Climate Exposures

PROJECT SUMMARY This project will study how exposure to climatic variability (i.e., temperature and precipitation anomalies) during different phases of the life course, from early childhood through adulthood, affect older adults’ health, economic status, and migration behaviors. We draw on data from the Indonesian and Mexican Family Life Surveys to measure three health outcomes (body mass index, hemoglobin, and blood pressure), consumption expenditures, and lifetime migration status among adults aged 50+ years in Indonesia (~36,000 observations from ~17,000 individuals) and Mexico (~19,400 observations from ~13,100 individuals). We link these demographic records to high-resolution climate data, and measure individuals’ climate exposures during early childhood (ages -1 to 5), adolescence (ages 12 to 18), and early adulthood (ages 19 to 25). We fit a series of fixed effects regression models to measure the independent effects of climate exposures during the three focal critical periods, while controlling for relevant demographic characteristics and spatial and temporal confounders. We then evaluate whether and how climate effects vary by age, sex, and rural (urban) residence at birth, all of which we expect to be correlated with climate vulnerability. Our third set of analyses evaluate whether exposure to recurring shocks from early childhood through adulthood have compounding and (or) cumulative effects on health in older adulthood. We also perform a series of supplemental analyses that test the robustness of our findings to alternative data and measurement decisions and compare the effects of earlier-life and contemporaneous shocks on health in later life. This study provides new evidence about the links between climate change and older adults’ demographic and health outcomes in the developing world, where the severity of climate change and extent of population aging are expected to increase in the decades ahead.