The effects of climate change on outdoor recreation participation in the United States: Projections for the 21st century.

Climate change is expected to impact individuals' recreational choices, as changing temperatures and precipitation patterns influence participation in outdoor recreation and alternative activities. This paper empirically investigates the relationship between weather and outdoor recreation using nationally representative data from the contiguous United States. We find that across most outdoor recreational activities, participation is lowest on the coldest days (<35 degrees Fahrenheit) and highest at moderately high temperatures (80 to 90 degrees). Notable exceptions to this trend include water sports and snow and ice sports, for which participation peaks at the highest and lowest temperatures, respectively. If individuals continue to respond to temperature changes the same way that they have in the recent past, in a future climate that has fewer cool days and more moderate and hot days, our model anticipates net participation across all outdoor recreation activities will increase by 88 million trips annually at 1 degree Celsius of warming (CONUS) and up to 401 million trips at 6 degrees of warming, valued between $3.2 billion and $15.6 billion in consumer surplus annually (2010 population). The increase in trips is driven by participation in water sports; excluding water sports from future projections decreases the consumer surplus gains by approximately 75 percent across all modeled degrees of warming. If individuals in northern regions respond to temperature like people in southern regions currently do (a proxy for adaptation), total outdoor recreation trips will increase by an additional 17 percent compared to no adaptation at 6 degrees of warming. This benefit is generally not seen at lower degrees of warming.

Estimates of Quality-Adjusted Life-Year Loss for Injuries in the United States.

PURPOSE: The goal of this study is to develop an approach for estimating nationally representative quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) loss from injury and poisoning conditions using data collected in the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) and the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). METHODS: This study uses data from the 2002-2015 NHIS and MEPS surveys. Injuries were identified in the MEPS medical events file and through self-reporting of medical conditions. We restricted our model to 163,731 adults, for which we predict a total of 294,977 EQ-5D scores using responses to the self-administered questionnaire. EQ-5D scores were modeled using age, sex, comorbidities, and binary indicators of the presence and duration of injury at the time of the health status questionnaire. These models consider nonlinearity over time during the first 3 y following the injury event. RESULTS: Injuries are identified in MEPS using medical events that provide a reasonable proxy for the date of injury occurrence. Health-related quality of life (HRQL) decrements can be estimated using binary indicators of injury during different time periods. When grouped into 29 injury categories, most categories were statistically significant predictors of HRQL scores in the first year after injury. For these groups of injuries, mean first-year QALY loss estimates range from 0.005 (sprains and strains of joints and adjacent muscles, n = 7067) to 0.109 (injury to nerves and spinal cord, n = 71). Fewer estimates are significant in the second and third years after injury, which may reflect a return to baseline HRQL. CONCLUSION: This research presents both a framework for estimating QALY loss for short-lived medical conditions and nationally representative, community-based HRQL scores associated with a wide variety of injury and poisoning conditions. HIGHLIGHTS: This research provides a catalog of nationally representative, preference-based EQ-5D score decrements associated with surviving a large set of injuries, based on patient-reported health status.Mean first-year QALY loss estimates range from 0.005 (sprains and strains of joints and adjacent muscles, n = 7067) to 0.109 (injury to nerves and spinal cord, n = 71).This article presents a novel methodology for assessing quality-of-life impacts for acute conditions by calculating the time elapsed between injury and health status elicitation. Researchers may explore adapting these methods to study other short-lived conditions and health states, such as COVID-19 or chemotherapy.

Examining the Relationship between Climate Change and Vibriosis in the United States: Projected Health and Economic Impacts for the 21st Century.

BACKGROUND: This paper represents, to our knowledge, the first national-level (United States) estimate of the economic impacts of vibriosis cases as exacerbated by climate change. Vibriosis is an illness contracted through food- and waterborne exposures to various Vibrio species (e.g., nonV. cholerae O1 and O139 serotypes) found in estuarine and marine environments, including within aquatic life, such as shellfish and finfish. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this study was to project climate-induced changes in vibriosis and associated economic impacts in the United States related to changes in sea surface temperatures (SSTs). METHODS: For our analysis to identify climate links to vibriosis incidence, we constructed three logistic regression models by Vibrio species, using vibriosis data sourced from the Cholera and Other Vibrio Illness Surveillance system and historical SSTs. We relied on previous estimates of the cost-per-case of vibriosis to estimate future total annual medical costs, lost income from productivity loss, and mortality-related indirect costs throughout the United States. We separately reported results for V. parahaemolyticus, V. vulnificus, V. alginolyticus, and "V. spp.," given the different associated health burden of each. RESULTS: By 2090, increases in SST are estimated to result in a 51% increase in cases annually relative to the baseline era (centered on 1995) under Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 4.5, and a 108% increase under RCP8.5. The cost of these illnesses is projected to reach $5.2 billion annually under RCP4.5, and $7.3 billion annually under RCP8.5, relative to $2.2 billion in the baseline (2018 U.S. dollars), equivalent to 140% and 234% increases respectively. DISCUSSION: Vibriosis incidence is likely to increase in the United States under moderate and unmitigated climate change scenarios through increases in SST, resulting in a substantial burden of morbidity and mortality, and costing billions of dollars. These costs are mostly attributable to deaths, primarily from exposure to V. vulnificus. Evidence suggests that other factors, including sea surface salinity, may contribute to further increases in vibriosis cases in some regions of the United States and should also be investigated. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP9999a.

Temperature and work: Time allocated to work under varying climate and labor market conditions.

Workers in climate exposed industries such as agriculture, construction, and manufacturing face increased health risks of working on high temperature days and may make decisions to reduce work on high-heat days to mitigate this risk. Utilizing the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) for the period 2003 through 2018 and historical weather data, we model the relationship between daily temperature and time allocation, focusing on hours worked by high-risk laborers. The results indicate that labor allocation decisions are context specific and likely driven by supply-side factors. We do not find a significant relationship between temperature and hours worked during the Great Recession (2008-2014), perhaps due to high competition for employment, however during periods of economic growth (2003-2007, 2015-2018) we find a significant reduction in hours worked on high-heat days. During periods of economic growth, for every degree above 90 on a particular day, the average high-risk worker reduces their time devoted to work by about 2.6 minutes relative to a 90-degree day. This effect is expected to intensify in the future as temperatures rise. Applying the modeled relationships to climate projections through the end of century, we find that annual lost wages resulting from decreased time spent working on days over 90 degrees across the United States range from $36.7 to $80.0 billion in 2090 under intermediate and high emission futures, respectively.

Economic Valuation of Coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever) Projections in the United States in Response to Climate Change.

Coccidioidomycosis, or valley fever, is an infectious fungal disease currently endemic to the southwestern United States. Symptoms of valley fever range in severity from flu-like illness to severe morbidity and mortality. Warming temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns may cause the area of endemicity to expand northward throughout the western United States, putting more people at risk for contracting valley fever. This may increase the health and economic burdens from this disease. We developed an approach to describe the relationship between climate conditions and valley fever incidence using historical data and generated projections of future incidence in response to both climate change and population trends using the Climate Change Impacts and Risk Analysis (CIRA) framework developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. We also developed a method to estimate economic impacts of valley fever that is based on case counts. For our 2000-15 baseline time period, we estimated annual medical costs, lost income, and economic welfare losses for valley fever in the United States were $400,000 per case, and the annual average total cost was $3.9 billion per year. For a high greenhouse gas emission scenario and accounting for population growth, we found that total annual costs for valley fever may increase up to 164% by year 2050 and up to 380% by 2090. By the end of the twenty-first century, valley fever may cost $620,000 per case and the annual average total cost may reach $18.5 billion per year. This work contributes to the broader effort to monetize climate change-attributable damages in the United States.

Review: Food loss and waste in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The research, development practitioner, and donor community has begun to focus on food loss and waste - often referred to as post-harvest losses (PHL) - in Sub-Saharan Africa. This article reviews the current state of the literature on PHL mitigation. First, we identify explicitly the varied objectives underlying efforts to reduce PHL levels. Second, we summarize the estimated magnitudes of losses, evaluate the methodologies used to generate those estimates, and explore the dearth of thoughtful assessment around "optimal" PHL levels. Third, we synthesize and critique the impact evaluation literature around on-farm and off-farm interventions expected to deliver PHL reduction. Fourth, we suggest a suite of other approaches to advancing these same objectives, some of which may prove more cost-effective. Finally, we conclude with a summary of main points.

Ten striking facts about agricultural input use in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Conventional wisdom holds that Sub-Saharan African farmers use few modern inputs despite the fact that most poverty-reducing agricultural growth in the region is expected to come largely from expanded use of inputs that embody improved technologies, particularly improved seed, fertilizers and other agro-chemicals, machinery, and irrigation. Yet following several years of high food prices, concerted policy efforts to intensify fertilizer and hybrid seed use, and increased public and private investment in agriculture, how low is modern input use in Africa really? This article revisits Africa's agricultural input landscape, exploiting the unique, recently collected, nationally representative, agriculturally intensive, and cross-country comparable Living Standard Measurement Study-Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) covering six countries in the region (Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda). Using data from over 22,000 households and 62,000 agricultural plots, we offer ten potentially surprising facts about modern input use in Africa today.