Quantifying the relationship between climatic conditions and personal financial and health wellbeing

Summary

We address an important research gap by quantifying the association between weather conditions (sunshine, rainfall, temperature anomalies) and individualnancial, mental and physical health self-assessments. We compile a unique dataset of >400,000 observations (1991-2018) by matching individual-level data (covering 380 Local Authorities) from the British Household Panel & UK Household Longitudinal Surveys to monthly and daily data from 32 weather stations. We provide robust evidence that favourable climatic conditions are positively related to the likelihood of reporting higher wellbeing assessments, and negatively regarding adverse conditions (particularly temperature anomalies). The estimated weather monetary cost reaches 15 percent of monthly household income.