![\"Climate](\"\/global_warming\/pictures\/Climate-Welfare-Accounting-Framework.png\")
<\/a>The Welfare Cost of Climate Change in the United States<\/a><\/p>\nAbout the Song
\nUsing a bottom-up framework built around mortality (VSL), life expectancy loss (VSLY), and morbidity\/quality-of-life loss (QALY\/DALY), the paper estimates that the 2025 U.S. welfare cost of climate change plausibly falls in a range of $350 billion to $900 billion, with a central estimate of roughly $560 billion. On a per-capita basis, that implies an annual burden of approximately $1,650 per person, with a broader plausible range of roughly $1,000 to $2,650 per person.<\/p>\n
This is not the full cost of climate change. It excludes many property, infrastructure, insurance, and macroeconomic channels that appear in broader all-in damage estimates. But it captures something those approaches often miss: the direct monetized cost of human harm.<\/p>\n
The broader lesson is that climate change is already functioning as a welfare tax on American life. It reduces the quantity of life through premature mortality, reduces the length of life through chronic environmental stress, and reduces the quality of life through illness, disability, anxiety, and recurring exposure to an increasingly unstable climate system. Any serious climate accounting framework that ignores those dimensions will understate the true burden of climate change.<\/p>\n