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Alan Barreca

UCLA, USA, and IZA, Germany

I wanted to communicate the results of my research to a wide audience in order to help raise awareness about the potential costs of climatic shocks. Greater awareness can help people better adapt on their own--or--help policymakers create better public health policies. IZA World of Labor is an incredible venue for raising public awareness about important issues and novel scientific findings

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Associate Professor, Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, UCLA; Research Associate, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Research Fellow, IZA

Research interest

Environmental economics, epidemiology, health, climate

Website

https://www.ioes.ucla.edu/person/alan-barreca/

Past positions

Associate Professor of Economics, Tulane University, USA (2014–2017); Assistant Professor of Economics, Tulane University (2008–2014); Post-Doctoral Fellow in Study of Aging (2011–2012)

Qualifications

PhD Economics, University of California, Davis, 2008

Selected publications

  • "Adapting to climate change: The remarkable decline in the US temperature mortality relationship over the 20th century." Journal of Political Economy (2016) (with K. Clay, O. Deschenes, M. Greenstone, and J. S. Shapiro).

  • "The long-term economic impact of in utero and postnatal exposure to malaria." Journal of Human Resources (2010).

  • "Saving babies? Revisiting the effect of very low birth weight classification." Quarterly Journal of Economics (2011) (with M. Guldi, J. Lindo, and G. Waddell).

  • "Climate change, humidity, and mortality in the United States." Journal of Environmental Economics and Management (2012).

  • "Absolute humidity, temperature, and influenza mortality: 30 years of county-level evidence from the United States." American Journal of Epidemiology (2012) (with J. Shimshack).

article(s)

  • Does hot weather affect human fertility?

    Hot weather can worsen reproductive health and decrease later birth rates

    Alan Barreca, July 2017
    Research finds that hot weather causes a fall in birth rates nine months later. Evidence suggests that this decline in births is due to hot weather harming reproductive health around the time of conception. Birth rates only partially rebound after the initial decline. Moreover, the rebound shifts births toward summer months, harming infant health by increasing third trimester exposure to hot weather. Worse infant health raises health care costs in the short term as well as reducing labor productivity in the longer term, possibly due to lasting physiological harm from the early life injury.
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