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Alan Barreca in Arizona PBS: Could climate change and lower birth rates be linked? UCLA researcher says yes

UCLA professor Alan Barreca, who teaches sustainability and has a background in economics, studied 80 years of U.S. birth data and concluded that if the Earth continues to warm as projected, human birth rates will drop dramatically. His research was published in the journal Demography last year.

The research looked at birth rates from 1931 through 2010 and found that on days with an average temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit, there was a drop in birth rates eight to 10 months later.

“There’s research showing that heat waves increase your chances of dying considerably,” Barreca said. “I started to think, well, that might just be the tip of the iceberg, and maybe there are impacts in other parts of our lives that are important to us.”