by Dish Staff
It’s another side-effect of global warming:
The paper, by Tatyana Deryugina of the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign and Solomon Hsiang of the University of California, Berkeley, shows a fairly dramatic negative influence of heat on economic productivity. In particular, they find that, for every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree C) that a given day’s 24 hour average temperature exceeds 59 degrees, economic productivity declines by 1.7 percent. And for a single very hot day — warmer than 86 degrees F — per capita income goes down by $ 20.56, or 28 percent.
The paper is penned in part as a riposte to those who have long assumed that in the United States, our economy is so advanced — and we’re so insulated by things like air conditioning — that a mere hot day can’t throw off the workforce.
The Dish 