IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wil/wileco/2019-05.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Heat Stress: Ambient Temperature and Workplace Accidents in the US

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Combining records for 71,225 severe accidents from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration with a panel of county-level weather data for 1990 to 2010, we find that heat shocks significantly increase accident rates across the United States, while cold shocks significantly reduce them. We find that heat shocks increase accidents both in plausibly temperature-sensitive industries, like construction and agriculture, and among industries that are not obviously sensitive to weather. While we find suggestive evidence of short-term adaptation to heat shocks over summer months, we find no evidence that the impacts of heat shocks have fallen over our 21-year panel.

Suggested Citation

  • Lucy Page & Stephen Sheppard, 2019. "Heat Stress: Ambient Temperature and Workplace Accidents in the US," Department of Economics Working Papers 2019-05, Department of Economics, Williams College.
    • Handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2019-05
    Note: Revision of earlier 2016 version
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://web.williams.edu/Economics/wp/Heat_Stress_Working_Paper.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua Graff Zivin & Solomon M. Hsiang & Matthew Neidell, 2018. "Temperature and Human Capital in the Short and Long Run," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(1), pages 77-105.
    2. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    3. Tatyana Deryugina & Solomon M. Hsiang, 2014. "Does the Environment Still Matter? Daily Temperature and Income in the United States," NBER Working Papers 20750, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kalkuhl, Matthias & Wenz, Leonie, 2020. "The impact of climate conditions on economic production. Evidence from a global panel of regions," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    2. Meierrieks, Daniel & Stadelmann, David, 2024. "Is temperature adversely related to economic development? Evidence on the short-run and the long-run links from sub-national data," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 136, pages 1-18.
    3. Sam Cosaert & Adrián Nieto & Konstantinos Tatsiramos, 2023. "Temperature and Joint Time Use," CESifo Working Paper Series 10464, CESifo.
    4. Wilde, Joshua & Apouey, Bénédicte H. & Jung, Toni, 2017. "The effect of ambient temperature shocks during conception and early pregnancy on later life outcomes," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 87-107.
    5. Vladimir Otrachshenko & Olga Popova, 2022. "Does Weather Sharpen Income Inequality in Russia?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 68(S1), pages 193-223, April.
    6. Acevedo, Sebastian & Mrkaic, Mico & Novta, Natalija & Pugacheva, Evgenia & Topalova, Petia, 2020. "The Effects of Weather Shocks on Economic Activity: What are the Channels of Impact?," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    7. Baylis, Patrick, 2020. "Temperature and temperament: Evidence from Twitter," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    8. Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell & Trinh, Trong-Anh, 2022. "Energy poverty, temperature and climate change," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    9. Otto Brøns-Petersen & Søren Havn Gjedsted, 2021. "Climate change and institutional change: what is the relative importance for economic performance?," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 23(2), pages 333-360, April.
    10. Xi Chen & Chih Ming Tan & Xiaobo Zhang & Xin Zhang, 2020. "The effects of prenatal exposure to temperature extremes on birth outcomes: the case of China," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 33(4), pages 1263-1302, October.
    11. Franziska Piontek & Matthias Kalkuhl & Elmar Kriegler & Anselm Schultes & Marian Leimbach & Ottmar Edenhofer & Nico Bauer, 2019. "Economic Growth Effects of Alternative Climate Change Impact Channels in Economic Modeling," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(4), pages 1357-1385, August.
    12. Popova, Olga & Otrachshenko, Vladimir & Tavares, José, 2019. "Extreme Temperature and Extreme Violence across Age and Gender: Evidence from Russia," GLO Discussion Paper Series 382, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    13. Cascarano, Michele & Natoli, Filippo & Petrella, Andrea, 2022. "Entry, exit and market structure in a changing climate," MPRA Paper 112868, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Kahn, Matthew E. & Mohaddes, Kamiar & Ng, Ryan N.C. & Pesaran, M. Hashem & Raissi, Mehdi & Yang, Jui-Chung, 2021. "Long-term macroeconomic effects of climate change: A cross-country analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    15. Jacopo Ponticelli & Qiping Xu & Stefan Zeume, 2023. "Temperature and Local Industry Concentration," Working Papers 23-51, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    16. Aguilar-Gomez, Sandra & Gutierrez, Emilio & Heres, David & Jaume, David & Tobal, Martin, 2024. "Thermal stress and financial distress: Extreme temperatures and firms’ loan defaults in Mexico," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    17. Nguyen, Ha Trong & Zubrick, Stephen R. & Mitrou, Francis, 2024. "The effects of sleep duration on child health and development," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 35-51.
    18. Cosaert, Sam & Nieto Castro, Adrian & Tatsiramos, Konstantinos, 2023. "Temperature and the Timing of Work," IZA Discussion Papers 16480, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Graff Zivin, Joshua & Song, Yingquan & Tang, Qu & Zhang, Peng, 2020. "Temperature and high-stakes cognitive performance: Evidence from the national college entrance examination in China," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    20. Ha Trong Nguyen & Huong Thu Le & Luke B Connelly, 2021. "Weather and children's time allocation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(7), pages 1559-1579, July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wil:wileco:2019-05. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Greg Phelan (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edwilus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.