Extreme weather and mortality: Evidence from two millennia of Chinese elites

Wang-Sheng Lee and Ben Li

Journal of Health Economics, 2021, vol. 76, issue C

Abstract: Modern technology empowers human beings to cope with various extreme weather events. Using Chinese historical data, we examine the impact of extreme weather on long-term human mortality in an environment where individuals had no access to modern technology. By combining life-course data on 5000 Chinese elites with historical weather data over the period 1–1840 AD, we find a significant and robust negative impact of droughts in childhood on the longevity of elites. Quantitatively, encountering three years of droughts in childhood reduces an elite's life span by about two years.

Keywords: Longevity; Weather; Early-life conditions; Elites; History of China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 N35 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016762962031047X
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:jhecon:v:76:y:2021:i:c:s016762962031047x

DOI: 10.1016/j.jhealeco.2020.102401

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Health Economics is currently edited by J. P. Newhouse, A. J. Culyer, R. Frank, K. Claxton and T. McGuire

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