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Long-term exposure to extreme temperatures could threaten individuals' mental health and psychological wellbeing. This study aims to investigate the long-term impact of cumulative exposure to extreme temperature. Differently from existing literature, we define extreme temperature exposure in relative terms based on local temperature patterns. Combining the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study and environmental data from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration from 2011 to 2015, this study demonstrates that heat and cold exposure days in the past year significantly increase the measured depression level of adults over age 45 by 1.75 and 3.00 per cent, respectively, controlling for the city, year, and individual fixed effects. The effect is heterogeneous across three components of depression symptoms as well as age, gender, and areas of residency, and air conditioning and heating equipment are effective in alleviating the adverse impact of heat and cold exposure. The estimation is robust and consistent across a variety of temperature measurements and model modifications. Our findings provide evidence on the long-term and accumulative cost of extreme temperature to middle-aged and elderly human capital, contributing to the understanding of the social cost of climate change and the consequent health inequality.

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Background\ud The rising global prevalence of mental illnesses such as depression, in combination with the stylized fact of low treatment rate for such illnesses, raises a serious public and academic concern on whether the untreated mental illness will further increase the disease prevalence over the next generation through the channel of intergenerational transmission.\ud Objective\ud This paper addresses the intergenerational correlation of mental health in China, by using a national representative survey dataset obtained from China Family Panel Studies.\ud Methods\ud We use a full 20-question version of the CES-D (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression) questionnaire to measure an individual’s mental health status. Based on a parent-child matched sample, we use a stepwise regression approach to estimate the impacts of parents’ CES-D scores on their children’s CES-D scores.\ud Results\ud We find that both father’s and mother’s mental health have significant impact on their children’s mental health. In addition, we find that parental mental health appears to have a greater impact on the mental health in the next generation than maternal mental health does, which is contrary to what most literature portrays.\ud Conclusion\ud Our results suggest that both maternal and paternal mental health have significant impacts on the mental health of their offspring, although paternal mental health appears to have a greater effect. Additionally, intergenerational correlation of mental health is present in all studied areas and subpopulations of China.

A common challenge faced by the healthcare systems in many low- and middle-income countries is the substantial unmet mental healthcare needs, or the large gap between the need for and the provision of mental healthcare treatment. This paper investigates the potential causes of this treatment gap from the perspective of economics. Specifically, we hypothesize that people with mental illness face four major hurdles in obtaining appropriate healthcare, namely the high nonmonetary cost due to stigma, the high out-of-pocket payment due to insufficient public funds devoted to mental health, the high time costs due to low mental healthcare resource availability, and the low treatment benefit due to slow technology diffusion. We use China as a study setting to show country-specific evidence. Our analysis supports the above theoretical argument on the four barriers to access, which in turn sheds light on the effective approaches to mitigate the treatment gap. Four policy options are then discussed, including an information campaign for mental health awareness, increasing public investment in primary mental healthcare resources, transforming the healthcare system towards an integrated people-centered system and capitalizing on e-health technologies.