Socioeconomic Disparities in Mortality due to Extreme Heat

• In Event: Climate Change and Population Health

Abstract

As rising global temperatures set new milestones, the reality of a warming planet presents a profound threat to human health and well-being. These health risks will only increase as temperatures continue to rise, but not everyone is equally vulnerable. Shelter, air conditioning, water, medical care, and other goods that people use to safeguard themselves from extreme heat cost money. As a result, those with few socioeconomic resources face barriers to acquiring the necessary protection. This inequality is consistent with the well-developed sociological literature on the fundamental causes of health outcomes. Research on this concept has been highly influential in highlighting ways that the application of flexible resources contributes to the emergence and maintenance of health disparities between socioeconomic groups. Moreover, a fundamental cause perspective emphasizes that socioeconomic disparities in mortality will be especially pronounced for causes of death that are the highly preventable because preventability provides more opportunities to apply the benefits of flexible resources. This underscores the need for research that can account for differences in the risk of heat-related mortality across socioeconomic groups. In this extended abstract, I analyze U.S. death certificate records from 2015-2023 to compare rates of mortality due to heat-related causes between people with low and high levels of educational attainment in order to quantify the magnitude of socioeconomic disparities in heat-related mortality. I find that educational disparities in deaths that can be directly attributed to extreme heat have grown in recent years and that they are observed across the age distribution. Moreover, I find that these disparities are larger in magnitude than for any of the five leading causes of death in the United States. The full manuscript will expand on this analysis by exploring educational disparities in the association between all-cause mortality and extreme heat events in U.S. counties.

Author

• Benjamin Sosnaud, Trinity University