Event Description
Climate change has already affected human health and wellbeing. It is thus also possible that it may directly or indirectly affect reproductive health and fertility. Few existing studies on the impact of climate variability or extreme climatic events on fertility focusing on a single country/location case study present inconsistent findings with negative climatic conditions leading to an increase in fertility on the one hand, and fertility decline on the other. To date, there are no comprehensive cross-national empirical studies on the impacts of global warming on fertility which are fundamental for tackling inconsistency in the findings. To perform such analysis, harmonized data for a large number of countries are required. In particular, data with a temporal and spatial granularity allowing matching of local climatic conditions with the outcome of interest i.e., fertility, are needed. Such data, however, are not yet readily available given a lack of data structure that is suitable (or easily adaptable) to deal with this problem. While the census data can be used to derive fertility statistics, the data are collected over a rather large time interval – often every 10 years – making it impossible to detect the effects of climate change on fertility behavior in a robust manner. Likewise, fertility statistics are
mainly available on a national scale, which masks regional heterogeneities that are of relevance to capturing the local climate impact. In order to address this issue, this study aims to produce a database of total fertility rate and age-specific fertility rate at the subnational level on a monthly and annual basis.
Event Information
Free and open to the public. In-person attendance is limited to 30 participants and registration is required via Columbia Events. All other guests are welcome via Zoom. Please register via Zoom to receive the event link. For more information, please email Alex de Sherbinin at [email protected].
Hosted by the Columbia Climate School.
