Climate Change, Population Growth, and Population Pressure

J. Vernon Henderson, Bo Yeon Jang, Adam Storeygard and David Weil

No 32145, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We develop a novel method for assessing the effect of constraints imposed by spatially-fixed natural resources on aggregate economic output. We apply it to estimate and compare the projected effects of climate change and population growth over the course of the 21st century, by country and globally. We find that standard population growth projections imply larger reductions in income than even the most extreme widely-adopted climate change scenario (RCP8.5). Climate and population impacts are correlated across countries: climate change and population growth will have their most damaging effects in similar places. Relative to previous work on macro climate impacts, our approach has the advantages of being disciplined by a simple macro growth model that allows for adaptation and of assessing impacts via a large set of climate moments, not just annual average temperature and precipitation. Further, our estimated effects of climate are by construction independent of country-level factors such as institutions.

JEL-codes: J11 O44 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-dem, nep-env and nep-gro
Note: EEE EFG
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32145.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
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:32145

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32145
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

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 ().