Assessment of socioeconomic costs to China’s air pollution

Abstract

Particulate air pollution has had a significant impact on human health in China and it is associated with cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and high mortality and morbidity. These health impacts could be translated to reduced labor availability and time. This paper utilized a supply-driven input-output (I-O) model to estimate the monetary value of total output losses resulting from reduced working time caused by diseases related to air pollution across 30 Chinese provinces in 2007. Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution was used as an indicator to assess impacts to health caused by air pollution. The developed I-O model is able to capture both direct economic costs and indirect cascading effects throughout inter-regional production supply chains and the indirect effects greatly outnumber the direct effects in most Chinese provinces. Our results show the total economic losses of 346.26 billion Yuan (approximately 1.1% of the national GDP) based on the number of affected Chinese employees (72 million out of a total labor population of 712 million) whose work time in years was reduced because of mortality, hospital admissions and outpatient visits due to diseases resulting from PM2.5 air pollution in 2007. The loss is almost the annual GDP of Vietnam in 2010. The proposed modelling approach provides an alternative method for health-cost measurement with additional insights on inter-industrial and inter-regional linkages along production supply chains

Evaluating willingness to pay for the temporal distribution of different air quality improvements: Is China's clean air target adequate to ensure welfare maximization?

“…Challenges related to air pollution control are particularly profound in developing countries (Alberini et al., ). In China, for example, air pollution induced by rapid economic growth has caused substantial human mortality and economic loss (Liu et al., ; Xia, Guan, Jiang, Peng, Schroeder, & Zhang, ). During 2015, four out of five major cities within China failed to meet the National Clean Air Standards and the national average concentrations of PM 10 and PM 2.5 exceeded the standards by 42.9% and 24.3%, respectively (MEP ).…”

Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report: Present-day ozone distribution and trends relevant to human health

“…Changes in mortality in relation to changes in ozone concentration, typically over a given time period, can be calculated using these risk estimates along with baseline mortality rates and population estimates (e.g. Fann et al, 2012;Riojas-Rodríguez, 2014;EEA, 2016;Xia et al, 2016).…”

The Tsinghua–Lancet Commission on Healthy Cities in China: unlocking the power of cities for a healthy China

“…In 2007 alone, particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2·5 µm (PM 2·5 ) affected the productivity of about 72 million workers in 30 Chinese provinces, causing an estimated economic loss of ¥346·3 billion (US$44·4 billion, about 1·1% of the national gross domestic product [GDP]). 19 Total economic losses attributed to the public health effects of pollution from particulate matter with a diameter of less than 10 µm (PM 10 ) and sulphur dioxide (SO 2 ) pollution in 74 cities were estimated to be as high as ¥439·8 billion ($70·9 billion, about 2·3% of these cities' GDP) in the first half of 2015. 20 China will also have a massive future burden of non-communicable diseases-most of which will affect urban areas-that will strain future health systems and limit economic growth in the country.…”