Working Paper: NBER ID: w27333
Authors: W. Walker Hanlon; Casper Worm Hansen; Jake W. Kantor
Abstract: Using weekly mortality data for London spanning 1866-1965, we analyze the changing relationship between temperature and mortality as the city developed. Our results show that both warm and cold weeks were associated with elevated mortality in the late 19th-century, but heat effects, due mainly to infant deaths from digestive diseases, largely disappeared after WWI. The resulting change in the temperature-mortality relationship meant that thousands of heat-related deaths–equal to 0.8-1.3 percent of all deaths–were averted. Our findings also indicate that a series of hot years in the 1890s substantially changed the timing of the infant mortality decline in London.
Keywords: temperature; mortality; London; historical data; disease environment
JEL Codes: I15; N3; Q54
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| temperature (Y60) | mortality (I12) |
| cold weather (Q54) | mortality (elderly) (I12) |
| warm weeks (Q54) | infant mortality (J13) |
| post-WWI improvements in disease environment (I14) | reduced temperature-mortality impact (I14) |
| hot summers in the 1890s (N91) | delayed infant mortality decline (J17) |