image: Map of study provinces (in green), including the equator and tropics. view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Heather Randell.
A study finds links between climate change and the educational attainment of children in the tropics who are exposed to extreme temperatures. Previous research has linked climate change to severe weather, but it is unclear whether global warming influences educational attainment. Heather Randell and Clark Gray combined temperature and precipitation data from the Climatic Research Unit time-series with census data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series-International collected between 1969 and 2012 to determine how exposure to extreme temperatures and precipitation in tropical climates correlates with educational attainment. Censuses were conducted in 29 countries across the Caribbean, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa and were representative of approximately 246 million individuals aged 12 to 16 years at the time of survey. In Asia, exposure to higher-than-average temperatures in utero and through age 5 correlated with 1.5 fewer years of education, compared with exposure to average temperatures. In Africa, children who experienced below-average rainfall early in life were predicted to have 1.8 fewer years of schooling than those who experienced above-average rainfall. In all regions, children from households where the head had at least a secondary-school education experienced the greatest educational penalties when exposed to early-life temperatures that were substantially higher than normal. The findings suggest that educational gains in some parts of the world may be undermined by global warming, according to the authors.
###
Article #18-17480: "Climate change and educational attainment in the global tropics," by Heather Randell and Clark Gray.
MEDIA CONTACT: Heather Randell, University of Maryland, College Park, MD; tel: +845-216-8736; email: <hrandell@umd.edu>, <heather.fawn@gmail.com>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences