The Impact of Climate Change on Mortality in the United States: Benefits and Costs of Adaptation

Olivier Deschenes

No 30282, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper reviews and extends the recent empirical literature on the impact of climate change on mortality and adaptation in the United States. The analysis produces several new facts. First, the reductions in the impact of extreme heat on mortality risk previously documented up to 2004 have continued up to 2019, consistent with continued investments in health-protecting adaptations to high temperatures. The second part of the paper examines the private and external costs of electricity generation and consumption related to high temperatures, a commonly-used proxy for measuring the consumption of adaptation services. Extreme temperatures increase electricity demand in the residential sector (relative to moderate temperatures), but not in the commercial, industrial, and transportation end-use sectors. The additional electricity demand in response to high temperatures results in significant external costs due to the release of local and global pollutants caused by the combustion of fossil fuels in order to produce electricity. These external costs, documented for the first time in this paper, are one order of magnitude larger than the private cost of adaptation associated with electricity consumption.

JEL-codes: I1 Q4 Q5 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-hea
Note: EEE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published as Olivier Deschenes, 2022. "The impact of climate change on mortality in the United States: Benefits and costs of adaptation," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, vol 55(3), pages 1227-1249.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30282.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Climate Change on Mortality in the United States: Benefits and Costs of Adaptation (2022)
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:nbr:nberwo:30282

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w30282

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().