Cause of Death Variation Under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

Samuel Sellers , University of Washington

Climate change will create numerous risks for human health, including effects related to temperature extremes, infectious disease, and undernutrition. Such risks, along with other socioeconomic and development trends, will affect cause-of-death patterns experienced in the coming decades. This study explores future mortality trends using the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) framework, a series of scenarios for understanding socioeconomic development trends in a world with climate change. Existing projections for GDP, urbanization, and demographic trends based on SSP narratives are incorporated into an integrated assessment model, International Futures, in order to project causes of death for all countries from 2020-2100. Under more optimistic SSPs, noncommunicable diseases rise as a proportion of all deaths, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, while more pessimistic scenarios suggest a continued high burden of largely preventable communicable diseases. In high-income countries, continuing significant burdens of NCDs are projected for the remainder of the century under all SSPs.

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 Presented in Session 234. Climate Change and Population Health