Title: Heterogeneous Impacts of Air Pollution on Mortality in China: Evidence from County-Level Panel Data

Speaker: Associate Professor Yazhen Gong, Renmin University of China

Time: May 19th, 2017 15:00–16:15

Venue: Conference Room 106B, Zhonghui Building (College of Economics, JNU)

Abstract:

Understanding the health impacts of air pollution in China has important policy implications for environmental regulation and economic development such as understanding the potential health consequences of recent national plans that aim to reduce the economic gap across different regions but encouraging manufacturing activities to be relocated from the east coast to the west. To estimate the cost of air pollution in China, many studies including some conducted by the World Health Organization and the World Bank are still largely rely on previous research based on the U.S. data. This practice may yield implausible results as China is experiencing much higher pollution concentration than that in the US (Cropper, 2003). Despite an emerging body of research on the heath impacts of air pollution in China (e.g. Ebestein et al., 2015; Lu et al., 2015; Zhou et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2012; Matus et al., 2012), much remains to be improved and learned especially with regard to the causal identification, the heterogeneity of the effects among the population, and the shape of the dose-response function. Using a county-level panel data set on mortalities from respiratory and cardiovascular diseases from 2004 to 2010 by age groups and gender, this study examines the heterogeneous impacts of PM2.5 concentration across population groups and at different levels of concentration. To establish the causal relationship, we instrument for county air quality using variations in economic growth in the top five exporting destination countries for the corresponding county. We find large heterogeneity in health impacts across age groups and the dose-response function is estimated to be nonlinear.