Wildfire Smoke Is Running Up Our Credit-Card Debt
The haze generates medical bills and other economic repercussions.
When heavy smoke is blown hundreds of miles away, the economic cost travels with it.
Photographer: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images
Americans are increasingly familiar with the many joys of wildfire smoke: stinging eyes, raspy throats, aggravated health conditions, speed-learning the nuances of the Air Quality Index. Now we can add increased credit card debt to the list. It’s the latest evidence that climate change isn’t a deep-future problem but a crisis that’s hurting us physically and economically right now.
A new working paper from researchers at the Dallas and Philadelphia Federal Reserve banks and UCLA Anderson School of Management finds that people exposed to wildfire smoke, even several miles from the source, usually go deeper into credit card debt as a result. They also pay their cards more slowly and fall into delinquency more often. After the 2018 Camp Fire in California, for example, households exposed to smoke 5 to 30 miles away from the fire added an annualized $1,400, on average, to their debt.