Monday Research Seminar Series 

February 25, Joseph Aldy

Noon, Hamburg Hall, Room 1502

Temperature Shocks, Energy Prices, and U.S. Mortality: An Assessment of the Health Impacts of Climate Change

We integrate economic and epidemiological modeling tools to assess the joint effects of temperature and energy prices on elderly mortality. We use panel data econometric techniques to examine the effects of energy prices on the temperature-mortality relationship for the over-64 population in cities throughout the continental US. We find evidence that higher energy prices exacerbate the effects of temperature shocks. Annually, cold effects are larger than the impacts of heat waves, and the effects are more pronounced for low-income populations and those subject to the highest energy prices. We show the effect of these results in simulations of global climate change.