ECONOMIC IMPLICATIONS OF CLIMATE CHANGE: HUMAN HEALTH IMPACTS THROUGH UNDERNOURISHMENT

Abstract

 This study quantified the economic impacts of climate change on human health attributable to undernourishment. Changes in morbidity and mortality due to nine types of diseases (e. g. diarrhea) caused by childhood underweight were interpreted as changes in labor, population and demand for health care, and recursively fed back to the AIM/ Computable general equilibrium model. Moreover changes in mortality were economically quantified by different monetary metrics and willingness to pay to reduce the risk. Future climate data provided by five general circulation models and four crop models were used to consider the model uncertainty in future climate conditions. We found that i) GDP and welfare loss caused by climate change impacts on human health throughout childhood underweight are small and different in different regions, but ii) the mortality is equivalent to -0.4~+ 0.1% change of world GDP and -6.0~+ 1.0% changes of regional GDPs in 2050. These impacts were not considered in previous studies but were not negligible.