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Economic status and temperature-related mortality in Asia

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Abstract

In developed countries, low latitude and high temperature are positively associated with the population’s ability to adapt to heat. However, few studies have examined the effect of economic status on the relationship between long-term exposure to high temperature and health. We compared heterogeneous temperature-related mortality effects relative to the average summer temperature in high-socioeconomic-status (SES) cities to temperature-related effects in low-SES cities. In the first stage of the research, we conducted a linear regression analysis to quantify the mortality effects of high temperature (at or above the 95th percentile) in 32 cities in Taiwan, China, Japan, and Korea. In the second stage, we used a meta-regression to examine the association between mortality risk with average summer temperature and gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. In cities with a low GDP per capita (less than 20,000 USD), the effects of temperature were detrimental to the population if the long-term average summer temperature was high. In contrast, in cities with a high GDP per capita, temperature-related mortality risk was not significantly related to average summer temperature. The relationship between long-term average summer temperature and the short-term effects of high temperatures differed based on the city-level economic status.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Women Scientist Research Program (#2012R1A1A3005549) and the Global Research Lab (#K21004000001-10A0500-00710) through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology and Environment Research and Technology Development Fund S-8 and S-10 from the Ministry of the Environment, Japan.

Author contributions

All authors contributed to the data collection and analysis and to the writing of the paper.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Environmental Medicine, Seoul National University of Medical Research Center, Seoul, Korea

    Youn-Hee Lim

  2. Environmental Health Center, Seoul National University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea

    Youn-Hee Lim

  3. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA

    Michelle L. Bell

  4. Department of Environmental Health, School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

    Haidong Kan

  5. Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan

    Yasushi Honda

  6. Environmental and Occupational Medicine, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan

    Yue-Liang Leon Guo

  7. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Ho Kim

  8. Institute of Health and Environment, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea

    Ho Kim

Authors
  1. Youn-Hee Lim
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  2. Michelle L. Bell
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  3. Haidong Kan
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  4. Yasushi Honda
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  5. Yue-Liang Leon Guo
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  6. Ho Kim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ho Kim.

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Lim, YH., Bell, M.L., Kan, H. et al. Economic status and temperature-related mortality in Asia. Int J Biometeorol 59, 1405–1412 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-014-0950-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00484-014-0950-1

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