PRI Climate Change & Health Working Group - APR 16, 2026

Group lead: Asher Rosinger

Zoom Only: https://psu.zoom.us/j/99296526603

Zarmeen Salim will present the following paper:

Early-life climate exposures and adult fertility: Evidence from the global tropics, Zarmeen Salim, Brian C. Thiede, and Clark Gray, The Pennsylvania State University, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Abstract:

There is increasing of evidence of the significant social and economic costs of global climate change. The lifelong consequences of many early-life shocks for individuals’ health and socioeconomic attainment have been well documented, but few studies consider the influence of early-life climate exposures and (or) the effects of early-life conditions on completed fertility despite strong conceptual bases for expecting such impacts. We address this gap by examining the effects of early-life temperature and precipitation exposures on the number of children ever born to women ages 40-49 years, with a focus on countries in the global tropics where climate vulnerability is high. We measure the global effects of climatic anomalies from the prenatal year to age 4 on women’s parity across 26 countries. We also evaluate whether this relationship varies by world region and countries’ position in the demographic transition. Finally, we compare the effects of early-life exposures, measured from ages –1 to 4, to those of exposures during a longer period of time that includes later years of childhood, as a means of exploring the mechanisms that may drive effects. Overall we find a positive and significant association of temperature increases on lifetime fertility. This effect is also observed in countries with relatively low and high (but not near-median) fertility rates and in sub-Saharan Africa. However, temperature effects are negative in Latin America and non-significant in Asia. Precipitation effects are much more variable across models, and we find no evidence of substantive differences in temperature effects when measured over a longer exposure period.