Three essays on the effects of climate change on human well-being: Implications for financial and psychological health

Sachdeva, Paavani

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129707 Copy

Description

Title

Three essays on the effects of climate change on human well-being: Implications for financial and psychological health

Author(s)

Sachdeva, Paavani

Issue Date

2025-04-29

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Ando, Amy W

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Ando, Amy W

Committee Member(s)

• Baylis, Kathrine R
• Xu, Yilan
• Yilmazer, Tansel

Department of Study

Agr & Consumer Economics

Discipline

Agricultural & Applied Econ

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Climate Change
• Flood
• Wildfire Smoke
• Mental Health
• Household Finance
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Malaria
• Dengue
• Chikungunya
• NSSO
• Debt
• Assets
• Savings

Abstract

Climate change, a defining challenge of the 21st century, poses unprecedented threats to human societies and ecosystems. Among its multifaceted impacts, the increasing frequency and severity of climate-exacerbated events such as floods and wildfires, and the rising incidence of vector-borne diseases (VBDs) stand out as significant drivers of economic vulnerability. These climate-exacerbated events not only disrupt lives and livelihoods but also impose non-trivial financial and psychological burdens on affected populations. This dissertation, titled “Three Essays on the Effects of Climate Change on Human Well-being: Implications for Financial and Psychological Health” examines how exposure to climate-exacerbated events shapes the well-being of individuals and households in the United States and India. This dissertation is structured around three chapters, each addressing a distinct dimension of human well-being in the face of climate-exacerbated events. The first chapter examines the financial health of households, focusing on the dynamics of debts and assets in response to exposure to floods and wildfire smoke. Using panel data and a range of financial health indicators – total debt, credit card debt, asset holdings and savings – the study investigates the immediate and longer term effects of exposure to these climate-exacerbated events, providing insight into the financial responses of affected households. The second chapter turns to mental health, investigating the link between psychological well-being and climate-exacerbated events. Drawing on clinical diagnoses data and self-reported distress scores, this chapter employs both survival and ordered logit techniques to assess the risk of a clinical diagnosis of depression, anxiety and the odds of reporting elevated levels of non-specific psychological distress following exposure to flood and wildfire smoke events. These results suggest that repeated exposure significantly increases the risk of new diagnoses and the odds of increased psychological distress. These findings provide evidence of the presence of invisible psychological costs of climate-related events and point to the importance of including mental health support in climate adaptation strategies. The third chapter focuses on disease ecology in the Indian context, exploring how climate variability and the rise in vector-borne disease outbreaks – such as malaria, dengue and chikungunya – shape household expenditures. Using district-level outbreak data matched to nationally representative household surveys, the chapter examines the associations between reported outbreaks and household spending. The findings indicate a consistent and robust pattern of higher household expenses following outbreaks, suggesting that climate-driven disease dynamics have the potential to impose significant and uneven financial burdens on households. Together, these chapters provide a multi-dimensional view of how climate change affects human well-being through financial and psychological health pathways. By leveraging diverse datasets, geographic contexts and empirical strategies, this dissertation offers new insights into the lived consequences of climate-exacerbated events. It underscores the urgent need for integrated policy responses that account not just for the environmental and economic dimensions of climate change, but also for its effects on household resilience, mental health and adaptive capacity.

Graduation Semester

2025-05

Type of Resource

Thesis

Handle URL

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129707

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2025 Paavani Sachdeva

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