Are older workers more likely to exit employment following unexpected heat waves?

Valerio Intraligi, Marco Biagetti and Andrea Principi

EconStor Preprints from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics

Abstract: An expanding body of research documents the adverse impact of heat stress on aggregate employment outcomes, particularly in climate-exposed sectors and occupations. Yet, the role of individual-level heterogeneity-especially for what concerns ageing-remains relatively underexplored. By using Italian individual-level labor market survey data over 2004-2017, this study employs a pseudo panel research design to assess the impact of heath waves on the probability of transitioning in and out of employment for different cohort groups. While preliminary individual-level evidence indicates that heat waves significantly increase the probability of employment exit and decrease the probability of employment entry; controlling for unobservable cohort-province characteristics yields that only older cohorts show a higher probability of employment exit-while only younger ones show a lower probability of entry. These findings provide robust evidence of the vulnerability of older workers to climate-related labor market disruptions, and underscore the importance of integrating age-sensitive dimensions into labor and climate policy frameworks.

Keywords: heat waves; Workforce ageing; Probit model; Pseudo panel; Employment transitions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C51 C55 J00 Q51 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age and nep-lab
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:esprep:318649

DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.5280324

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