Temperature Effects on Labor in Latin America
Abstract
It has long been known that environmental conditions can affect humans' performance of various tasks, both physical and mental. In light of projected climate change, heat's impact on performance is of particular concern. While there is evidence that performance suffers, from an economic standpoint, how this performance effect changes a worker's ability or willingness to work is of particular concern. Workers' decisions to supply less labor may be a key channel for economic losses due to climate change, especially in developing countries that experience high temperatures and humidity. In a study of worker behavior in Guatemala, Mexico, and Nicaragua, increasing temperatures by 1°C was found to reduce labor supplied by up to an hour per day for each worker on average in the poorest and hottest places. This result holds across different levels of risk exposure to heat, indicating little evidence of potential adaptation measures.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMPA31B2202F
- Keywords:
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- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGEDE: 1986 Statistical methods: Inferential;
- INFORMATICSDE: 4323 Human impact;
- NATURAL HAZARDSDE: 4327 Resilience;
- NATURAL HAZARDS