The Impact of Climate Change on Child Well-Being: A Scoping Review

Background: Climate change represents a defining planetary health challenge with profound implications for children’s development and well-being globally. Although prior reviews have primarily emphasized physical health outcomes, the broader impacts on child well-being remain fragmented across disciplines, outcome domains, and measurement approaches. This scoping review addresses these gaps by synthesizing empirical evidence on how climate-related exposures shape multidimensional child well-being, with particular attention to the social dimensions of environmental change, including structural inequalities, policy contexts, and developmental systems.

Methods: We conducted a scoping review of peer-reviewed studies published in English and Chinese (2000–September 20, 2025) across five databases (APA PsycNET/PsycINFO, PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and CNKI). A total of 7,851 records were identified and screened using predefined criteria and synthesized to map climate-related exposures, child well-being outcome domains, theoretical frameworks, and measurement approaches. The review integrates evidence across diverse geographic regions, with particular attention to low- and middle-income countries and climate-vulnerable populations.

Findings: The review included 118 studies, most published since 2020 and predominantly quantitative, with a strong focus on early childhood and low- and middle-income settings. Climate change was associated with adverse child outcomes across four domains: physical health (n=89), mental health (n=14), social well-being and protection (n=10) and education (n=5). Physical health outcomes, particularly infectious diseases, physical growth, mortality, and birth outcomes, were most frequently examined and showed sensitivity to heat, rainfall variability, drought, and flooding. Evidence on non-physical domains remains limited but reveals important social dimensions of environmental change. Climate-related shocks were associated with psychological distress, climate anxiety, child labor, early marriage, school disruption, and reduced educational attainment. Across domains, effects were disproportionately concentrated among socially and economically marginalized populations, reflecting intersections with poverty, gender inequality, and resource insecurity. A key finding is that climate change operates not only as an environmental exposure but also as an amplifier of social risk, shaping child well-being through interconnected ecological, social, and policy systems. However, most studies relied on deficit-oriented outcomes, heterogeneous measurement, and lacked explicit theoretical grounding. There was substantial variation in how both exposures and outcomes were operationalized, limiting comparability and cumulative knowledge building. Despite growing global attention, domains such as mental health, social protection, and education remain underexamined.

Conclusions: This review advances a multidimensional, child-centered framework that situates climate change within the social dimensions of environmental change and policy contexts. Findings highlight the need for theory-informed, longitudinal, and equity-oriented research that captures developmental processes and cumulative exposures. Strengthening measurement consistency and integrating social, policy, and environmental perspectives are critical for informing climate adaptation, social protection systems, and climate-informed intervention strategies (e.g., addressing structural drivers such as climate-related crop failure rather than focusing solely on downstream consequences like food insecurity) that promote child well-being. These insights contribute to research and policy agendas in environmental and climate justice, particularly efforts to address the unequal distribution of climate-related risks and to support resilient, child-centered responses to socio-environmental change.