The study authors did not assess some other factors that carry economic costs, like damage to biodiversity, because such losses can be hard to quantify. But the poorest third of counties in the nation could sustain damages costing as much as a fifth of their income. In contrast, the research projects that colder and richer counties in the Rockies and along the northern border will experience improvements in health, energy costs and agricultural production.

If the United States fails to take decisive measures to combat climate change, it will become a poorer country facing more dramatic inequality, according to a study.

"If we continue on the current path, our analysis indicates it may result in the largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in the country's history", Hsian, one of the study's co-authors, added.

The study team analyzed the potential impact of rising temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, more intense storms, and continuing sea-level rises on a wide array of fields, including agriculture, criminality, health, energy demand, the labor market and coastal economies.

"Increasingly, extreme heat will drive up violent crime". "The emissions coming out of our cars and power plants are reshaping the American economy".

The researchers estimate that for each 0.55 degree Celsius of global warming, the U.S. economy will lose about 0.7 percent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with each additional degree of warming costing more than the one before.

Co-author James Rising, a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley, credited the team's findings to recent developments within big data and computing. "Conflict and political instability - those kinds of things we don't see today, but could be baked into the future".