Nber Working Paper Series Temperature and Human Capital in the Short- and Long-run

We provide the first estimates of the potential impact of climate change on human capital, focusing on the impacts from both short-run weather and long-run climate. Exploiting the longitudinal structure of the NLSY79 and random fluctuations in weather across interviews, we identify the effect of temperature in models with child-specific fixed effects. We find that short-run changes in temperature lead to statistically significant decreases in cognitive performance on math (but not reading) beyond 26C (78.8F). In contrast, our long-run analysis, which relies upon long-difference and rich cross-sectional models, reveals no statistically significant relationship between climate and human capital. This finding is consistent with the notion that adaptation, particularly compensatory behavior, plays a significant role in limiting the long run impacts from short run weather shocks. Joshua S. Graff Zivin University of California, San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive, MC 0519 La Jolla, CA 92093-0519 and NBER [email protected] Solomon M. Hsiang Goldman School of Public Policy University of California, Berkeley 2607 Hearst Avenue Berkeley, CA 94720-7320 and NBER [email protected] Matthew J. Neidell Department of Health Policy and Management Columbia University 722 W 168th Street, 6th Floor New York, NY 10032 and NBER [email protected]