2025 Theses Doctoral

Evaluating the Effects of Climate Change as a Threat Multiplier for Educational Disparities

Sprague, Nadav L.

For nearly two decades, climate change has been recognized as a threat multiplier for national security, educational, and health trends—exacerbating challenges for communities with pre-existing disadvantages. In the United States, certain sociodemographic (racial, ethnicity, and socioeconomic) identities are associated with pre-existing disadvantages in educational, quality of life, safety, and health related outcomes. According to the threat multiplication theory, climate change will exacerbate these sociodemographic related differences.

Here, I examine how climate change acts as a threat multiplier for specific disadvantages in educational-related trends. In the first chapter, I first discuss analytical pathways to examine climate change as a threat multiplier and the importance of examining the impacts of childhood climate exposures. In the second chapter, I conduct a weight-of-evidence scoping review that discusses the current scientific literature on the effects of climate change related exposures on children’s educational outcomes globally. In the third chapter, I conduct a nationwide (US) repeated measures analysis that examines the impacts of changes in extreme temperature days on school district proficiency scores and how these changes in extreme temperature days act as an effect measure modifier for sociodemographic (racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic) differences in school proficiency scores. In the fourth chapter, I conduct a regional (Midwest USA) analysis that leverages data collected from a community-academic partnership with St. Louis and Chicago Public Schools. This series of four seasonal cross-sectional analyses examines climate vulnerability as an effect measure modifier for seasonal demographic trends in Quality of Life (QoL), life satisfaction, neighborhood safety and violence perceptions among students attending Title-I (low-socioeconomic community serving) schools.

Findings suggest that climate change acts as a threat multiplier for education-related sociodemographic differences. Study findings document the direct associations between climate change related exposures and education-related outcomes. Study findings also document how climate change related exposures act as multiplicative effect measure modifiers for educational-related sociodemographic associations. Climate change related variables both amplified pre-existing sociodemographic differences as well as documented potential emergent patterns of differences.