Asian development review

Climate change is expected to negatively affect human health in most countries. This ongoing threat is especially significant in South, East, and Southeast Asia (SESA), where more than 50% of the world’s population resides and where weather-dependent economic activities such as agriculture remain important contributors to gross domestic product (GDP). Furthermore, the lower levels of income observed in many SESA countries limit opportunities for private and public investment in health-preserving adaptations in response to extreme weather events. While the empirical literature on the predicted health impacts of climate change for the United States (US) and Europe is well developed, the literature for Asia and for lower-income countries is still lacking (see Deschenes 2014 for a review). Most
of the existing evidence on climate change impacts for Asia is based on integrated assessment models and other simulation-based approaches rather than data-driven empirical estimates (see, for example, ADB 2014, 2017 for a detailed discussion of the results from such quantitative model analyses). This gap in the literature highlights the importance of deriving empirical estimates of climate change impacts
based on historical data for Asia.
This paper presents a cross-country panel data analysis of the effects of temperature variability on health in 16 SESA countries. Health data come from the World Development Indicators (WDI) for the period 1960–2015, which includes annual measures of mortality rates across various age groups. An important
advantage of using mortality rates as indicators of health is that they are reasonably well measured across many countries for long periods of time. Furthermore, mortality rates are key indicators of a population’s ability to smooth consumption; withstand income shocks; and more generally address all changes in health determinants that are driven by weather variability, including effects on human physiology (Burgess et al. 2014).

source:

https://www.adb.org/publications/asian-development-review-volume-35-number-2