IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rff/dpaper/dp-25-11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Emergency Department Visits and Temperature: Evidence from Mexico

Author

Listed:
  • Pietro Colelli, Francesco
  • Pavanello, Filippo
  • Sarmiento, Luis

Abstract

We estimate the impact of temperatures on emergency department visits using daily data from the universe of public hospitals in Mexico from 2008 to 2022. We find that cold temperatures decrease visits by up to 8.9 percent on the same day, and warm temperatures increase visits by as much as 3.6 percent. Using distributed lag models, we then show that cold temperatures can reduce visits for the next 30 days by up to 16.3 percent. For warm temperatures, contemporaneous and cumulative effects are similar (limited harvesting). These findings suggest that, unlike mortality, temperatures affect the demand for emergency services linearly. Leveraging the granularity of our dataset, we also document significant heterogeneities (e.g., higher sensitivity for children and teenagers) and relevant mechanisms, such as ecosystem dynamics and behavioral changes. Finally, we project that temperature-driven annual emergency department visits will increase by 0.24 percent by midcentury, resulting in an estimated increase of 92 million USD in annual medical expenditures in Mexico.Keywords: Temperature, Morbidity, Mexico, Climate ChangeJEL: I12, O13, Q54

Suggested Citation

  • Pietro Colelli, Francesco & Pavanello, Filippo & Sarmiento, Luis, 2025. "Emergency Department Visits and Temperature: Evidence from Mexico," RFF Working Paper Series 25-11, Resources for the Future.
  • Handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-25-11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.rff.org/documents/4810/WP_25-11.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    temperature; morbidity; mexico; climate changejel: i12; o13; q54;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I12 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Health Behavior
    • O13 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Agriculture; Natural Resources; Environment; Other Primary Products
    • Q54 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Climate; Natural Disasters and their Management; Global Warming

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:rff:dpaper:dp-25-11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Resources for the Future (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/rffffus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.