{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/129707"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/129707","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Three essays on the effects of climate change on human well-being: Implications for financial and psychological health","abstract":"Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2027-05-01","abstract_html":"Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2027-05-01","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Sachdeva, Paavani"],"institution":"University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Agricultural & Applied Econ","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Ando, Amy W","Baylis, Kathrine R","Xu, Yilan","Yilmazer, Tansel"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2025,"date_issued":"2025-04-29","date_published":"2025-04-29","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:05Z","subjects":["Climate Change","Flood","Wildfire Smoke","Mental Health","Household Finance","Depression","Anxiety","Malaria","Dengue","Chikungunya","NSSO","Debt","Assets","Savings"],"languages":["en","eng"],"rights":["Copyright 2025 Paavani Sachdeva"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129707","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Ando, Amy W","Baylis, Kathrine R","Xu, Yilan","Yilmazer, Tansel"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Sachdeva, Paavani"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2025-04-29","2025-05"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text","Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Agricultural & Applied Econ"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Climate Change","Flood","Wildfire Smoke","Mental Health","Household Finance","Depression","Anxiety","Malaria","Dengue","Chikungunya","NSSO","Debt","Assets","Savings"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["en","eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 2025 Paavani Sachdeva"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129707"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2027-05-01","The student, Paavani Sachdeva, accepted the attached license on 2025-04-22 at 10:11.","The student, Paavani Sachdeva, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2025-04-22 at 10:19.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2025-04-29 at 17:12.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #21883 on 2025-10-19 at 19:53:35","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."]},{"key":"dc:format","label":"Dc Format","values":["application/pdf"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Three essays on the effects of climate change on human well-being: Implications for financial and psychological health"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Ando, Amy W","Baylis, Kathrine R","Xu, Yilan","Yilmazer, Tansel"],"dc:creator":["Sachdeva, Paavani"],"dc:date":["2025-04-29","2025-05"],"dc:description":["Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2027-05-01","The student, Paavani Sachdeva, accepted the attached license on 2025-04-22 at 10:11.","The student, Paavani Sachdeva, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2025-04-22 at 10:19.","This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2025-04-29 at 17:12.","DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #21883 on 2025-10-19 at 19:53:35","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."],"dc:format":["application/pdf"],"dc:identifier":["https://hdl.handle.net/2142/129707"],"dc:language":["en","eng"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 2025 Paavani Sachdeva"],"dc:subject":["Climate Change","Flood","Wildfire Smoke","Mental Health","Household Finance","Depression","Anxiety","Malaria","Dengue","Chikungunya","NSSO","Debt","Assets","Savings"],"dc:title":["Three essays on the effects of climate change on human well-being: Implications for financial and psychological health"],"dc:type":["text","Thesis"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Agricultural & Applied Econ"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:05Z"}