COMPOUND TEMPERATURE AND PRECIPITATION IMPACTS ON PHYSICAL FUNCTIONING: EVIDENCE FROM LABOR TRACKING SURVEY IN CHINA

Climate change poses dramatic labor health risks, but existing evidence mainly focuses on the assessments of single climatic factors. Through the physical functioning index, this study identified the effects of both temperature and precipitation on labor health and assesses the magnitude of potential working hour loss in the warming future. Our results indicate that both mean state and event level of compound climate lead to physical functioning loss. Light rain will alleviate the health damage during the occurrence of extreme heat, while precipitation of more than 10mm will exacerbate the impact on humans. Adaptation from time extension, insurance coverage, and income growth will effectively mitigate health loss. In the absence of increasing adaptive capacity, China is expected to suffer an effective working hour loss of 1.78-3.10h per capita per day by 2090. Economically developed and labor-intensive regions need to be highly concerned about economic shocks from compound climate.