Research

This study investigates how early-life exposure to weather shocks affects cognitive function and its decline after age 50 in China. While extensive literature documents the immediate effects of environmental factors on early-life health and human capital, I examine a longer exposure period (from in utero to age 15) and its impacts on cognitive aging. Exploiting both cross-sectional and panel dimensions of the data, I find that early childhood (prenatal to age 4) is particularly critical. A one-standard deviation increase in weather shocks during this period reduces cognitive scores by 0.05 standard deviations after age 50—equivalent to the cognitive decline typically observed over 1.5 years of aging. Moreover, prenatal weather shocks accelerate cognitive decline, observable after age 65. The effects appear to be driven by both the sensitive prenatal period and reduced human capital investment following these shocks.

This study aims at investigating the effect of high temperatures on cognitive functions of individuals aged 50 and over. The empirical analysis exploits longitudinal data from the SHARE Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe which is combined with measures of daily temperature collected by ground weather stations. Our estimates are based on an individual fixed-effect strategy and show that high temperatures impede the cognitive functions. Our results reveal a stronger effect for poorer individuals, those aged over 65 years as well as those who are overweight. The poorest elderly are the more vulnerable to global warming, which impacts their working memory and fluency. This may affect their capacity to make complex decisions and, in turn, negatively affect their standard of living. Thus, our results suggest that global warming could amplify socio-economic inequalities.