Zarmeen Salim
She will present (co-authors Brian Thiede, Clark Gray) the following paper:
"Early-life climate exposures and adult fertility: Evidence from the global tropics".
Thursday April 16, 1pm-2pm (Room 218 Biobehavioral Health Building and Zoom)
Zarmeen Salim will present (co-authors Brian Thiede, Clark Gray) the following paper: "Early-life climate exposures and adult fertility: Evidence from the global tropics".
Early-life climate exposures and adult fertility: Evidence from the global tropics Zarmeen Salim1 , Brian C. Thiede1 , and Clark Gray2
1The Pennsylvania State University, 2The 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.
