The Death Effect of Severe Climate Variability

Using data for all 2,454 municipalities of Mexico for the period 1980-2010, this paper analyzes the relationship between exposure to extreme temperatures and mortality rates. I find that severe heat increases mortality, while the health effect of severe cold is generally trivial. I show that exchanging one day with a temperature of 16-18 °C for one day with temperatures higher than 30 °C increases the crude mortality rate by 0.15 percentage points, a result robust to several model specifications. It is also found that the extreme heat effect on death is significantly more acute in rural regions, leading to increases of up to 0.2 percentage points vis-à-vis a 0.07-point increase in urban areas. © 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of the Organising Committee of ICOAE 2013.