Joshua Graff Zivin Cited on the Affects of Temperature on Work
How a hotter world could make us all less productive
09/27/2012
Brad Plumer,
Washington Post
Normally, when we talk about the possible consequences of climate change, we talk about severe heat waves, or rising oceans, or increased droughts, or more wildfires. Disruptive natural disasters. But some recent research suggests that there’s another, more subtle effect of a warming planet that could be even more economically significant. Higher temperatures appear to cause worker productivity to plummet.
In a 2010 PNAS paper, Solomon Hsiang studied countries in Central America and the Caribbean. He found that once the temperature gets up past 26°C (78°F), economic output in labor-intensive sectors of the economy starts falling. Specifically, output drops about 2.4 percent for every increase in degree Celsius. This was true of both agricultural and non-agricultural sectors. As Hsiang explained in a follow-up blog post, it appears that “people generally are less productive and tire faster when it’s hot.”
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Joshua Graff Zivin is Associate Professor of International Relations and Pacific Studies and Affiliated Faculty of Economics. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and Research Director for International Environmental and Health Studies at the Institute for Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC).
