Temperature extremes in early life and human capital: evidence from China’s labor market

Understanding the long-term consequences of climate change is critical for designing effective adaptation strategies. While existing research has focused predominantly on the short-term economic and public health impacts of extreme weather events, the mechanisms through which climate exposure shapes human capital accumulation remain underexplored. We analyze the enduring effect of extreme temperature exposure during gestation and early childhood on adult earnings, utilizing a dataset of over one million individuals from China. Our results demonstrate the detrimental impact of extreme heat is substantially larger than that of extreme cold, and the first trimester of pregnancy represents the most vulnerable period to these thermal shocks. These long-term effects of early exposure to extreme weather vary among different populations and exhibit heterogeneity across income level, gender, urban–rural and age cohort. These findings remain robust to multiple sensitivity analyses. We further estimate labor income losses under three IPCC AR6 scenarios (SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5), providing a counterfactual assessment of climate change impacts. By bridging the gap between climate science and labor economics, our work offers empirical evidence and policy insights to support climate adaptation planning in developing countries, particularly for safeguarding human capital development and productivity.