城市热量、死亡率和经济成本：来自泰国曼谷的证据

Policy Research Working Paper Urban Heat, Mortality, and Economic Costs Evidence from Bangkok, Thailand Jane ParkSteven Louis Rubinyi Urban, Disaster Risk Management,Resilience and Land Global Department Policy Research Working Paper11346 Abstract Urban heat is an increasingly important public healthrisk, yet empirical evidence on its health and economicimpacts remains limited, particularly for rapidly growingtropical megacities. This study aims to provide an opera-tional basis for urban planning and investment decisionsby quantifying heat-induced health burdens across Bang-kok’s 50 amphurs (districts) and the associated citywideeconomic costs. The study translates heat exposure intoexcess deaths at the amphur level by employing a city-spe-cific temperature-mortality relationship along with data on comparable in magnitude to road traffic fatalities in Bang-kok, which claimed 614 lives in 2021. In monetary terms,heat-related excess mortality is estimated to account for0.1–0.7 percent of Bangkok’s gross provincial productduring 2016–18 (between 7.76 billion and 46.97 billionbaht in current prices), exceeding the Bangkok Metropol-itan Administration’s public health budget in 2020 (6.733billion baht). This study concludes that heat exposure inBangkok is associated with a substantial public healthburden and meaningful welfare losses. The pronounced The Policy Research Working Paper Series disseminates the findings of work in progress to encourage the exchange of ideas about developmentissues. An objective of the series is to get the findings out quickly, even if the presentations are less than fully polished. The papers carry thenames of the authors and should be cited accordingly. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper are entirely those Urban Heat, Mortality, and Economic Costs: Evidence from Bangkok, Jane Park1Steven Louis Rubinyi23 JEL codes: Q54, I12, R11, Q51 Keywords: Nonoptimal temperature. Urbanheat. Excess mortality. Value of a Statistical Life. 1. Introduction Excess urban heat has emerged as a critical public health challenge for cities, with impacts that extend wellbeyond thermal discomfort (seeRoberts et al. 2023andWorld Bank 2025for detailed discussions on theimpacts of extreme urban heat). High temperatures increase the incidence of vector-, water-, and food-bornediseases (IPCC 2022), increase the risk of heat exhaustion andheat stroke, andbreathinginhot air exacerbateschronic conditions such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (The Lancet RespiratoryMedicine 2018). In tropical cities, high humidity reduces the body’s ability to cool off through sweatingwhilecreating favorable conditions for infectious arthropods, such as mosquitos and ticks. Warmer, more humid These immediate health impacts often translate into broader urban challenges. Heat-related illness reduceslower labor productivity, increases household medical expenditures, and places strain on public healthsystems—often during periods when other urban services are simultaneously stressed. These impacts tendto unfold quietly, affect large populations at once, and disproportionately harm vulnerable groups such as These challenges are particularly acute in Bangkok as persistently high temperatures and humidity intersectwith dense built form and uneven access to cooling. Bangkok has already experienced a substantialintensification of the urban heat island effect: the temperature difference between the city’s central businessdistrict and less built-upareas increased from around 4.4°C in2000 to about 5.8°C by2020, due to additionalland cover changes compounded by global warming (Pan et al. 2023). While continued urban expansion isplacing more people, infrastructure, and economic activity in heat-exposed environments, the city is Although excess heat is recognized as a policy concern, its invisible nature means that its health impact isoften underreported, if not missed completely, in public health statistics. Also, existingestimates forBangkokrequire updates. For instance, the most widely cited multi-country, multi-citystudy byGasparrini et al. (2015)isbased on mortality records from 1999 to 2008, makingit outdated to capture human acclimatization to evolvinglocal temperatures over time (AndersonandBell,2009;Lee et al., 2014;Ye et al., 2012). Further, more granularevidence is needed to design targeted and equitable responses, as susceptibility and adaptability to excess Robust quantification of heat-related mortality is therefore necessary to address these gaps. Clear andcredible estimates of the human costs associated with high temperatures are essential for making heat-related health risks visible in public health and urban policy discussions, where they are often overlookedrelative to more immediately observable hazards. By providinga consistent empirical basis for assessingthemagnitude of impacts, such quantification allows heat-related risks to be evaluated alongside other