How Does Climate Environment Affect Middle-aged and Elderly People’s Health Performances: Evidence from China

This research examined the effects of climatic factors on the health performances of middle-aged and elderly people in China, analyzing data from 2011 China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and Integrated Surface Hourly (ISH) dataset with logistic regression models. We find that external climate environment is negatively associated with middle-aged and elderly people’s various health outcomes: the odds of diagnosing some chronic diseases, having pains or reporting a poor health are likely to increase under the increase of daily mean temperature, daily temperature difference, daily mean sea level pressure, and daily maximum sustained wind speed. Also, the health effect differs by gender and age groups. The results of this paper might provide supports to future public health policies from a climate-environmental perspective to prevent older people from suffering from various types of chronic diseases and pains, thereby improving the health quality of older people in China.