Solid fuel use for cooking and its health effects on the elderly in rural China

Jin Liu, Bingdong Hou, Xiao-Wei Ma and Hua Liao ()

No 111, CEEP-BIT Working Papers from Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEP), Beijing Institute of Technology

Abstract: Indoor air pollution is mainly caused by solid fuel use for cooking in developing countries. Many previous studies focused on its health risks on the children and in specific local area. This paper investigates household energy usage and transition for cooking in rural China and the health effects on the elderly. A national large-scale dataset CHARLS (China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study) covering 450 villages and communities is employed. Logit regressions were used to quantitatively estimate the effects, after controlling for some factors such as income, demographic and geographical variables. The results robustly show that compared to non-solid fuels, solid fuel use significantly increases the possibility of chronic lung diseases (30%), exacerbation of chronic lung diseases (95%), seizure of heart disease (1.80 times), and decreases self-evaluated health status of the elderly (1.38 times). Thus, it is urgent to improve clean energy access for cooking in rural China.

Keywords: indoor air pollution; household solid fuel; health risks; elderly; rural; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q40 Q54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 25 pages
Date: 2018-01-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-age, nep-cna, nep-ene, nep-env, nep-hea and nep-tra
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

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