title: Climatic conditions and human mortality: spatial and regional variation in the United States.
abstract: Previous research on climatic conditions and human mortality in the United States has three gaps: largely ignoring social conditions, lack of nationwide focus, and overlooking potential spatial variations. Our goal is to understand whether climatic conditions contribute to mortality after considering social conditions and to investigate whether spatial non-stationarity exists in these factors. Applying geographically weighted regression to a unique nationwide county-level dataset, we found that (1) net of other factors, average July temperatures are positively (detrimentally) associated with mortality while January temperatures mainly have a curvilinear relationship, (2) the mortality-climatic condition associations are spatially non-stationary, (3) the relationships between social conditions (e.g., social capital) and mortality are stable geographically, and (4) without a spatial approach to understanding the environment-mortality relationship, important spatial variations are overlooked. Our findings suggest that a universal approach to coping with the relationships between rapid climate changes and health may not be appropriate and effective.
authors.affiliation: Assistant Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Center for Social and Demographic Analysis, University at Albany, State University of New York, tyang3@albany.edu , , , Address: 315 AS, 1400 Washington Avenue, Albany, NY 12222.
authors.forename: Tse-Chuan
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Distinguished Professor of Rural Sociology and Demography, Department of Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education, Population Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, Address: 110A Armsby, University Park, PA 16802.
authors.forename: Leif
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jensen
keywords: Environment; US south; climate; geographically weighted regression; health and mortality; regional variation