Health and Financial Impacts of Extreme Weather in the City

Background and Purpose. As urbanization and climate change continue, more people in cities are exposed to extreme weather events. These events can impact many aspects of health and well-being. Studies of social vulnerability to weather and climate are often conducted at the city, county, or regional scale, and tend to examine one impact at a time (e.g., heat wave mortality using hospital records). To advance new knowledge, this study asks about multiple impacts of extreme weather events, looks at variations in low and moderate income areas that are already likely to be more vulnerable to these impacts, and examines both socioeconomic characteristics and social cohesion as possible predictors of impact variability in a population. This focus on multiple dimensions of people’s lives, in a study that prioritizes the experiences of the most vulnerable, is consonant with social work values and reflects an important contribution that social work can bring to the broader field of the human dimensions of climate change.

Methods. Data are from randomly-sampled mail surveys (N=438) with residents of an urbanizing city in the southeastern United States. Participants were recruited from census tracts with household median income at or below the city median of $33,494. For two kinds of events (very hot temperatures in the summer and extreme winter weather), participants were asked to what extent their physical health, mental health, and finances were affected, on a 4-point scale for each dependent variable: not at all, slightly, somewhat, or very much. Independent variables were individual and household socioeconomic characteristics, and perceived neighborhood social cohesion. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression.

Results. For both events, and for each kind of impact, over half of participants reported being affected to at least some degree. For hot summer temperatures, physical health effects were most common (77.9%), followed by financial (64.7%), and mental health (56.4%) effects. For extreme winter weather, financial effects were most common (77.8%), followed by physical health (65.1%) and mental health (52.5%) effects. For both events, ordinal logistic regression found generally similar association patterns among variables by type of impact. Older participants (OR=1.02 summer, 1.02 winter) and those reporting lower social cohesion (OR=1.39 summer) had higher odds of reporting physical health effects. Higher odds of mental health effects were also associated with lower social cohesion (OR=1.48 summer, 1.38 winter), and with being a white participant (OR=2.00 summer, 2.76 winter). Higher odds of financial effects, meanwhile, were associated with being female (OR=1.54 summer, 1.90 winter) and having less education (OR=1.47 summer, 1.87 winter).

Conclusions and Implications. Findings suggest that physical health, mental health, and financial effects of extreme weather events are common in the study setting. Within low and moderate income communities, subpopulations may be vulnerable to multiple and distinct effects in different ways. Environmentally-informed social workers might respond to these differences through tailored needs assessments and proactive climate adaptation planning with vulnerable groups. Social cohesion may be an important protective factor to consider, which warrants further study.