Temperature, Disease and Death in London: Analyzing Weekly Data for the Century from 1866-1965

Using novel weekly
mortality data for London spanning 1866–1965, we analyze the changing
relationship between temperature and mortality as the city developed. Our main
results show that warm weeks led to elevated mortality in the late nineteenth century,
mainly due to infant deaths from digestive diseases. However, this pattern
largely disappeared after WWI as infant digestive diseases became less
prevalent. The resulting change in the temperature–mortality relationship meant
that thousands of heat-related deaths—equal to 0.9–1.4 percent of all deaths—were
averted. These findings show that improving the disease environment can
dramatically alter the impact of high temperature on mortality