RIEB Discussion Paper Series No.2025-07

Title

Hotter Days, Wider Gap: The Distributional Impact of Heat on Student Achievement

Abstract

This study demonstrates that heat disproportionately impairs human capital accumulation among low-performing students compared with their high-performing peers, using nationwide examination data from 22 million students in Japan. Given the strong correlation between academic performance and socioeconomic background, this suggests that heat exposure exacerbates pre-existing socioeconomic disparities among children. However, access to air conditioning in schools significantly mitigates these adverse effects across all achievement levels, with particularly pronounced benefits for lower-performing students. These findings suggest that public investment in school infrastructure can help reduce the unevenly distributed damage caused by heat to student learning, thereby promoting both efficiency and equity.

Keywords

Heat; Distributional impact; Student achievement; Adaptation; Air conditioning; Children; Climate change

JEL Classification

I21, I24, Q54

Inquiries

Mika AKESAKA
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration (RIEB)
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: +81-78-803-7036
FAX: +81-78-803-7059

Hitoshi SHIGEOKA
Graduate School of Public Policy, The University of Tokyo
Department of Economics and David Lam Centre, Simon Fraser University
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
National Bureau of Economics Research (NBER)