Relationship between season of birth, temperature exposure, and later life wellbeing
Open accessAbstract
We study how exposure to extreme temperatures in early periods of child development is related to adult economic outcomes measured 30 y later. Our analysis uses administrative earnings records for over 12 million individuals born in the United States between 1969 and 1977, linked to fine-scale, daily weather data and location and date of birth. We calculate the length of time each individual is exposed to different temperatures in utero and in early childhood, and we estimate flexible regression models that allow for nonlinearities in the relationship between temperature and long-run outcomes. We find that an extra day with mean temperatures above 32 °C in utero and in the first year after birth is associated with a 0.1% reduction in adult annual earnings at age 30. Temperature sensitivity is evident in multiple periods of early development, ranging from the first trimester of gestation to age 6-12 mo. We observe that household air-conditioning adoption, which increased dramatically over the time period studied, mitigates nearly all of the estimated temperature sensitivity.
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High temperature exposure in utero led to a small reduction in adult wages in the USA.
“Early evidence showed that high temperature exposure in utero led to a small reduction in adult wages in the USA; 139”
From Climate change and child health: A scoping review and an expanded conceptual framework (2021) · cites this paper as [139]
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- Authors
- Isen, A., Rossin-Slater, M., & Walker, R.
- Affiliations
- United States Department of the Treasury (US)
- Department of Health Research & Policy, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA 94305;
- National Bureau of Economic Research (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2017-12-04
- Volume
- 114
- Issue
- 51
- Pages
- 13447-13452
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC5754756
- OpenAlex
- W2771258685
- Cited by
- 152
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 21 · 2022: 16 · 2021: 22 · 2020: 18 · 2019: 9 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 1
- FWCI
- 5.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (0339191, 0427889, 9978093)
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- U.S. Department of the Treasury
- National Institute on Aging (R01AG018854)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Climate Change and Health Impacts
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Pediatrics, Perinatology and Child Health › Birth, Development, and Health
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Animal Science and Zoology › Effects of Environmental Stressors on Livestock
- Keywords
- season of birth, temperature extremes, adult earnings, adult well-being, temperature sensitivity, gestation, nonlinear temperature effects
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Female, Humans, Income, Male, Pregnancy, Prenatal Exposure Delayed Effects, Seasons, Models, Statistical, Extreme Heat
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