My dissertation investigates the relationship between weather, mortality, and economic wellbeing. The first chapter examines the long-term economic impact of in utero and postnatal exposure to malaria using historical data from the United States. Recent research shows that individuals who were exposed to early-life health shocks have worse outcomes as adults, all else equal. Because malaria has an acute impact on in utero and postnatal health conditions, such exposure may have significant economic effects over the life cycle. To test this conjecture, I match adults in the 1960 Decennial Census to the malaria death rate in their state-year of birth. Because malaria death rates are potentially correlated with important omitted variables and measured with error, I employ a novel identification strategy that uses variation in interacted hot and rainy weather conditions to instrument for malaria exposure. The IV estimates indicate that adults exposed to malaria around the time of birth had significantly lower levels of educational attainment.

Using data from the United States (c. 1968-2002), the second chapter estimates the effects of temperature and humidity on mortality rates in order to contribute insight into the potential costs of climate change. Previous research on the health effects of climate change has focused on the impact of temperature changes; this is the first research to examine the potential consequences of humidity changes. This analysis leads to five important results: First, I find that failure to control for humidity overstates the importance of cold temperature as a determinant of mortality. Second, I find that there is a reverse-J shaped temperature-mortality relationship, and a reverse-J shaped humidity-mortality relationship. Third, the adverse effects from exposure to cold temperatures and low-humidity levels are both large and statistically significant. Fourth, interacted temperature-humidity models produce similar estimates to non-interacted models. Fifth, the effects are largest for cardiovascular and respiratory deaths and for individuals over 45 years of age. My estimates imply that climate change may actually reduce mortality rates in the U.S. by a small amount in the coming decades; however, I demonstrate that failing to control for humidity overstates the health benefits of climate change.