The Mortality and Medical Costs of Air Pollution: Evidence from Changes in Wind Direction

Deryugina, Tatyana; Heutel, Garth; Miller, Nolan; Molitor, David; Reif, Julian

doi:10.3386/w22796

Cited by 117 publications

(239 citation statements)

References 47 publications

(70 reference statements)

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“…These long-run health problems can manifest themselves in the short run if high levels of pollution trigger conditions resulting from previously accumulated exposure. Infant (Chay and Greenstone, 2003) and elderly morbidity resulting from air pollution (Deryugina et al, 2016) can require working adults to miss work to care for them (Aragon et al, 2016;Hanna and Oliva, 2015). Long-term exposure can also reduce life expectancy (Chen et al, 2013a) which can result in experienced workers being replaced by new, inexperienced ones.…”

Section: Pollution and Productivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To ensure exogeneity, we condition on the wind blowing from the nearby to the focal city (when the wind blows toward the nearby city its pollution measure is not exogenous because greater focal city output would increase the nearby city's air pollution level) and show that the timing of this is random. Wind direction has been used as an instrument for air pollution in a few studies (Luechinger, 2009;Schlenker and Walker, 2011;Deryugina et al, 2016). Identification requires that the instrument be sufficiently correlated with the endogenous regressor and uncorrelated with any unobserved determinant of the dependent variable.…”

Section: Air Quality Of Nearby City As Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

Viard

Zhang

2017

SSRN Journal

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We provide comprehensive estimates of air pollution's effect on short-run labor productivity for manufacturing firms in China from 1998 to 2007. An emerging literature estimates air pollution's effects on labor productivity but only for small groups of workers of particular occupations or sets of firms to ensure causality. To provide more comprehensive estimates necessary for policy analysis, we estimate effects for all but some small firms (90% of manufacturing output in China) and capture all channels by which pollution influences productivity. We instrument for reverse causality between pollution and output using thermal inversions.Our causal estimates imply that a one g/m 3 decrease in PM2.5 (SO2) increases labor productivity by 0.0084% (0.0572%) with an elasticity of -0.45 (-0.86). Lowering PM2.5 (SO2) by 1% nationwide through methods other than reducing manufacturing output would generate productivity increases of CNY 57.6 (110.5) thousand annually for the average firm and CNY 9.2 (17.6) billion annually or 0.06% (0.12%) of GDP across all firms. Accounting for output's contribution to PM2.5 (SO2) emissions leads to a net elasticity of -0.23 (-0.75).Using air quality of a nearby city conditional on wind blowing toward a focal city as an alternative instrument, we find a one g/m 3 decrease in PM10 increases productivity by 0.41% with an elasticity of -0.43 using a subsample of larger cities. Improving air quality generates substantial output and productivity benefits and these should be considered in evaluating environmental regulations and in evaluating their effect on firm competitiveness. JEL Codes: D62; Q51; Q53; R11

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Section: Pollution and Productivitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Air Quality Of Nearby City As Instrumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

Viard

Zhang

2017

SSRN Journal

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“…Evidence for these regulations comes mainly from associative studies that have consistently demonstrated a relationship between PM 2.5 and increased morbidity and mortality. Deryugina et al (2016) found an increase in daily PM 2.5 three-day mortality. Thus, they guess that each 1 µg/m 3 increase in PM 2.5 increases the three-day emergency visits by 2.3 per million beneficiaries.…”

Section: Variables (Axes F1 Et F2: 9908 %)mentioning

confidence: 89%

Quantification of mass concentrations aerosols PM2.5 in primary schools. Case study: Tiaret city (Algeria)

Naceur

Maatoug

Benaichata

et al. 2019

EREM

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23 primary schools have been selected in Tiaret city, and the collection of PM2.5 was performed in the morning, afternoon and evening, in the presence and absence of the pupils. The results found have shown a gradient of concentrations of PM2.5 by site typology. Low and average concentrations are recorded in the areas close to forests: 23.32±2.77 µg/m3 and the high concentrations are observed in the sites exposed to road traffic: 33.57±3.27 µg/m3 in winter. However, concentrations recorded in the urban sites are lower in the summer (sites exposed to road traffic: 25.33±2.85 µg/m3, sites close to the forests 23.78± 1.92µg/m3). We also noticed that the dominance of PM2.5 has been observed in the vicinity of the major axes of movement. The dispersion of these particles is illustrated by a detailed maps. The maps present information obtained by hierarchical classification, they aim to answer a need for spatial knowledge of the problem of particulate pollution in urban areas in the city of Tiaret. The hierarchical classification allowed to distinguish three groups of schools: urban, urban highly subject to dense road traffic and schools close to green spaces and forests. The results obtained revealed a high contamination of the atmospheric environment of the city of Tiaret by PM2.5 aerosols, taking into account the results recorded in primary schools. Mass concentration of PM2.5 in the 1st period (autumn and winter) is higher than that of the 2nd period (spring and summer). Indeed, the highest concentrations are recorded in the presence of pupils in winter.

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“…Yet, little empirical evidence exists on the impacts of car exhaust on health outcomes. Although it is well established that air pollution has negative impacts on population health (Chay and Greenstone, 2003a,b;Currie and Neidell, 2005;Chen et al, 2013;Deschenes et al, 2017;Deryugina et al, 2019), the existing quasi-experimental evidence is largely based on measures of overall air pollution without identifying the contribution of car pollution. Two pioneering papers have studied the health impacts of car pollution on disadvantaged infants-those born to mothers residing next to highway toll stations and those sick enough to die in response to weekly traffic variation (Currie and Walker, 2011;Knittel et al, 2016)-but these estimates might not be generalizable.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Impact of Car Pollution on Infant and Child Health: Evidence from Emissions Cheating

Alexander

Schwandt²

2019

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Car exhaust is a major source of air pollution, but little is known about its impacts on population health due to socioeconomic selection, measurement error, and avoidance behaviors. We exploit the dispersion of emissions-cheating diesel cars-which secretly polluted up to 150 times as much as gasoline cars-across the United States from 2008-2015 as a unique opportunity to overcome these empirical challenges and measure the health impacts of car pollution. Using the universe of vehicle registrations, we demonstrate that a 10 percent cheating-induced increase in car exhaust increases rates of low birth weight and acute asthma attacks among children by 1.9 and 8.0 percent, respectively. These health impacts occur at all pollution levels and across the entire socioeconomic spectrum. * Diane Alexander (dalexand@frbchi.org) is an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Hannes Schwandt (schwandt@northwestern.edu) is an assistant professor of economics at the School for Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. We are thankful to 1 threats to causal inference, including socio-economic selection, avoidance behavior, and measurement error. In this paper, we exploit a unique natural experiment that overcomes these empirical challenges.In 2008, a new generation of supposedly clean diesel passenger cars was introduced to the U.S. market. 3 These new diesel cars were marketed to environmentally conscious consumers, with advertising emphasizing the power and mileage typical for diesel engines in combination with unprecedented low emissions levels. Clean diesel cars won the Green Car of the Year Award in 2009 and 2010, and quickly gained market share. By 2015, over 600,000 cars with clean diesel technology were sold in the United States. In the fall of 2015, however, it was discovered that these cars covertly activated equipment during emissions tests that reduced emissions below official thresholds, and then reversed course after testing. In street use, a single "clean diesel" car could pollute as much nitrogen oxide (NO X ; a precursor to fine particulate matter and ground-level ozone) as 150 equivalent gasoline cars. 4 Hereafter, we refer to cars with "clean diesel" technology as cheating diesel cars.The dispersion of these cheating diesel cars across the United States gives us a unique opportunity to measure the causal effect of car pollution on infant and child health. This natural experiment provides several unique features. First, it is typically difficult to infer causal effects from observed correlations of health and car pollution, as wealthier individuals tend to sort into less-polluted areas and drive newer, less-polluting cars. The fast roll-out of cheating diesel cars provides us with plausibly exogenous variation in car pollution exposure across the entire socioeconomic spectrum of the United States. Second, it is well established that people avoid known pollution, which can mute estimated impacts of air pollution on health (Neidell, 2009). Moderate pollution increases stemming from cheatin...

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The Mortality and Medical Costs of Air Pollution: Evidence from Changes in Wind Direction

Cited by 117 publications

References 47 publications

Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

Air Quality and Manufacturing Firm Productivity: Comprehensive Evidence from China

Quantification of mass concentrations aerosols PM2.5 in primary schools. Case study: Tiaret city (Algeria)

The Impact of Car Pollution on Infant and Child Health: Evidence from Emissions Cheating

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