Elisabetta Ottoz (p), Lisa Sella, Francesca Rota

Massimiliano Carlo Pietro Rizzati

Night-time economy is a complex phenomenon that carries contradictory effects: social and economic benefits due to commercial activities and social interactions, but also difficulties related to the impact of alcohol on crime and disorders, coupled with public nuisance caused by recreational noise pollution.
Tensions are likely to emerge between residents in gentrifying neighbourhoods and nightlife businesses due to the nuisance effects of the latter especially because cultural and leisure activities are alcohol-centred activities.
The paper aims at quantifying the damage, both neurological and economic, caused by night noise pollution on residents by using a sleep quality index.
An experiment carried through fit-bit type tracker bracelets supplied to residents of the involved districts in Turin (San Salvario, Vanchiglia, Piazza Vittorio) and of other areas of the city not affected by the phenomenon (control sample), is aimed at monitoring participants’ nocturnal sleep disturbances.
Social costs of the nightlife phenomenon, both in terms of health damages (increased pathologies associated with sleep disturbance) and in tems of costs determined on the Health System and the public administtration (controls, sanctions, lawsuits), will be investigated through the sleep indicator.

Giulia Martinelli (p)

Elisabetta Ottoz

It is widely acknowledged that climate change affects human health directly and indirectly. Whereas the effects on physical health are tangible and measurable, the psychological consequences and the causal link are difficult to identify. Exposure to climate change-related events and the recognition of climate change as a global threat may cause psychological distress. So far, the literature focused mainly on suicide rate, schizophrenia, and emergency admissions, while anxiety and depression were partially covered because of the lack of data not relying on self-reported measures.
Exploiting the panel structure of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) of the English National Health Service and Agri-4-Cast JRC weather data, the present study aims to uncover the causal relationship between extreme events due to climate change and the status of mental health of people living in England and Wales at a local level of the Clinical Commissioning Groups. Thanks to the longitudinal data on psychological therapies for depression and anxiety disorders and the data on extreme events, we will be able to disentangle the effects of climate change on the mental health of an entire population in a region.
A dynamic difference-in-differences model will be employed to evaluate the causal relationship between the number of anxiety and depression services by NHS Talking Therapies and the extreme weather events that affected the areas of the Clinical Commissioning Groups. This research design leverages on as-good-as-random variation in weather considering that extreme events are largely unexpected in time and space. This characteristic rules out potential bias that may lie in the error term due to spatial and temporal sorting of the population into more favourable places or periods, allowing for the identification of the causal effect. Uncovering the causal relationship brings to the forefront the potential socio-economic burden that such an issue would imply if it did not receive the right attention.

Anna Nicińska (p), Paweł Gora, Marcin Luckner, Joanna Rachubik, Gabriela Sousa Santos, Katarzyna Zagórska, Ewa Zawojska

Giulia Martinelli

Childhood conditions relevant to education and health shape well-being throughout the entire life course. Outdoor air quality in school and compulsory education are two of these factors that we examine in current study. Air quality had been neglected in the regulations of public education in many countries, and only recently attracted attention of researchers, and to smaller degree, local communities. Although compulsory education and health protection are guaranteed for children in many countries, systematic monitoring of the inequalities in the access to public education is not always performed by local authorities responsible for the compulsory schooling, while monitoring of school air quality is usually entirely absent. This paper develops a method that allows us to examine the inequalities in air quality, school performance and access to school by public transport for all children entering the compulsory primary education and living in Warsaw (Poland). We model the choice of primary school taking into account three features of a school: average outcome in the final school exam, distance from the child’s place of living, and limitation of school capacity. We find that public transport in Warsaw provides connection to school lasting up to 20 minutes for 90% of the examined children, and 80 days a year on average with the air pollution levels at school, exceeding the WHO reccomendations. We find and little inequalities both in the school’s final exam outcome and outdoor air quality.

Massimiliano Bratti, Enrico Lippo, Massimiliano Carlo Pietro Rizzati (p)

Anna Nicińska

Anthropogenic climate change is causing temperature anomalies that are expected to increase average temperatures. This will also increase the likelihood of heat waves and heat islands. A growing body of literature has emerged to examine the effects of these projected temperature increases on various indicators of human health. However, as shown by recent work, the effects of temperature shocks may also differ across climate regions according to the historical distribution of temperatures. Our aim is to contribute to this literature by focusing on Italy. Besides direct impacts, this country is also particularly subject to climate change-related hazards, such as droughts, flooding, and other climate shocks. Specifically, we estimate the causal effect of temperature shocks on human mortality using highly detailed Italian administrative data on daily deaths at the municipal level. Temperature data are obtained from a reanalysis with a spatial resolution of 0.1 degrees and aggregated at each municipality over the 2011–2022 period. To refine our analysis and account for heterogeneity, we include controls for socioeconomic, demographic, geographical, and health factors. Our study documents that hot (cold) days are more harmful in colder (hotter) municipalities, suggesting evidence of population adaptation to climate change. Finally, using projections from SSP-RCP scenarios to estimate future temperature anomalies, we carried out a prediction exercise to forecast future deaths potentially attributable to climate change.