The impact of climate on life satisfaction

David Maddison and Katrin Rehdanz

Ecological Economics, 2011, vol. 70, issue 12, 2437-2445

Abstract: We analyse the influence of climate on average life satisfaction in 79 countries using data from the World Values Survey. Climate is described in terms of ‘degree-months’ calculated as the cumulated monthly deviations from a base temperature of 65°F (18.3°C). Our results suggest that countries with climates characterised by a large number of degree-months enjoy significantly lower levels of life satisfaction. This finding is robust to a wide variety of model specifications. Using our results to analyse a particular climate change scenario associated with the IPCC A2 emissions scenario points to major losses for African countries, but modest gains for Northern Europe.

Keywords: Climate; Climate change; Happiness; Life satisfaction; Survey data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 H41 I31 Q51 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (90)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800911003028
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecolec:v:70:y:2011:i:12:p:2437-2445

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.07.027

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().