Heat and work-related injuries: How temperature measurement affects outcomes

Climate change is producing significant transformations in the labor market, intensifying inequalities due to its heterogeneous effects. This paper proposes an empirical analysis for Italy on the causal relationship between high temperatures and work-related injuries, at the provincial and daily levels, for the period 2014-2022, by exploiting within-country local variation. Our analysis is the first to compare the estimated effects of heat on injuries at the workplace using, besides air temperature, two other meteorological indicators that are comprehensive human heat stress indexes not applied yet in economics: the wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) and the universal thermal climate index (UTCI). Our findings confirm that higher temperatures significantly increase the risk of work-related injuries, with coefficients rising across temperature thresholds and varying by indicator and worker characteristics. The study finds that results vary depending on the temperature indicator used, with greater sensitivity observed at moderate-risk temperatures rather than extremes, where indicators align more closely. Our findings suggest the need for advanced climatic metrics and detailed analyses to better assess heat stress effects on workplace safety, particularly in climate-vulnerable regions like Italy.