Home Heating and Asthma in New Zealand

Rachel Susan Webb and Andrea Menclova

Working Papers in Economics from University of Canterbury, Department of Economics and Finance

Abstract: New Zealand has one of the highest asthma prevalence rates among developed countries and previous research attributes this partly to poor socioeconomic conditions in certain neighborhoods and to insufficient home heating in particular. International retrospective empirical studies suggest that home heating is associated with asthma rates. However, strong evid¬ence of causality is lacking. In this paper, we empirically investigate the link between home heating and hospital asthma admissions in New Zealand using panel data techniques and controlling for endogeneity. The hypothesis that higher electricity prices (via less adequate heating) increase hospital asthma admissions is tested and receives strong empirical support across a number of model specifications and datasets used.

Keywords: Asthma; Home heating; Electricity price (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2013-04-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-hea
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cbt:econwp:13/17

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