Uneven Access? Resiliency Infrastructure Locations and Heat Deaths in U.S. Counties

• In Event: Infrastructure, Instability, and Health: Local Determinants of Community Well-Being

Abstract

Although climate change is increasing the intensity of many weather-related hazards, extreme heat has long been among the deadliest in the United States (Shindell et al 2020). Its impacts are disproportionately experienced by vulnerable populations, including older adults, people experiencing homelessness, and individuals with limited socioeconomic resources who lack access to air-conditioned environments (Lin et al., 2024; Xu et al., 2025). While municipalities commonly rely on short-term, formally designated cooling centers to mitigate risk, their effectiveness is often constrained by irregular schedules and social stigma. In this context, public libraries – which offer free, welcoming, and public indoor space – may serve as an important form of resiliency infrastructure (Laurian et al., 2025; Wahler et al., 2020).

Past research has shown that greater library availability has a small but significant impact on reducing county-level heat-related mortality (Khaleghinia and Krause, 2026). However, availability does not equate to access. Extending the long line of research that examines the (often uneven) placement of social amenities and disamenities within and across communities, this study measures library accessibility as the proportion of a county’s population living within a 500-meter radius of a public library, which roughly corresponds to a 15-minute walking distance. We further separately calculate the proportion of each county’s Black population and population living below the poverty level– both of which experience disproportionately high levels of heat-mortality – that live within walking distance of a library. These three measures of library accessibility serve as our focal explanatory variables.

Using a national county-level panel covering 3,009 U.S. counties from 2000 to 2023 (72,216 county–year observations), we employ a correlated random effects (CRE) panel model to analyze the relationship between heat-related deaths and library accessibility across the United States. County-level mortality data comes from the CDC Wonder dataset, and library is drawn from the Public Library Survey (PLS). The analysis controls for key demographic, socioeconomic, and environmental factors, including population age structure, homelessness, extreme heat exposure (days with heat index ≥105°F), and county-level spending on social welfare.

Descriptive results reveal meaningful disparities in access across population groups, while initial empirical findings show that greater library accessibility—measured for the population as a whole—is significantly associated with lower heat-related mortality, even after accounting for confounding factors. Notably, the magnitude of this association is larger when accessibility is measured specifically for low-income populations. Taken together, these findings suggest that public libraries function as critical heat-adaptation infrastructure, with particularly strong protective effects at the neighborhood level and among the most vulnerable residents.

Author

• Rachel M. Krause, University of Kansas
  Presenting Author