Inexpensive Heating Reduces Winter Mortality

Janjala Chirakijja (), Seema Jayachandran and Pinchuan Ong
Additional contact information
Janjala Chirakijja: Monash University
Pinchuan Ong: Northwestern University

No 12195, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: This paper examines how the price of home heating affects mortality in the US. Exposure to cold is one reason that mortality peaks in winter, and a higher heating price increases exposure to cold by reducing heating use. It also raises energy bills, which could affect health by decreasing other health-promoting spending. Our empirical approach combines spatial variation in the energy source used for home heating and temporal variation in the national prices of natural gas versus electricity. We find that a lower heating price reduces winter mortality, driven mostly by cardiovascular and respiratory causes.

Keywords: weather-related mortality; winter mortality; energy prices; energy poverty; fuel poverty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I1 J14 Q41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2019-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-reg
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12195.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Inexpensive Heating Reduces Winter Mortality (2021)
Working Paper: Inexpensive Heating Reduces Winter Mortality (2019)
Working Paper: Inexpensive Heating Reduces Winter Mortality (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp12195

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().