Climate Exposures Increase the Risk of Anemia Among Reproductive-Age Women in Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Climate change is having significant demographic and health impacts on human populations around the world. There is growing empirical evidence about the impacts of climate variability and change on population health, but this work has focused disproportionately on children and aggregate indicators of weight and (or) height. We extend this literature by focusing on a more targeted indicator of health-anemia-among reproductive-age women. To do so, we combine Demographic and Health Surveys data for approximately 1.3 million women (ages 15-49 years) with climate and geographic data to analyze climate's impact on anemia risk. We find that unusually hot and wet conditions increase anemia and that exposure to climate extremes-when temperature and precipitation are well above or below average-has even stronger associations with anemia. Specifically, hot conditions as well as hot-and-dry and hot-and-wet conditions increase the risk of anemia, underlining the importance of temperature as well as combinations of environmental exposures for human health and wellbeing.