Happiness in the air: How does a dirty sky affect mental health and subjective well-being?
Xin Zhang,
Xiaobo Zhang and
Xi Chen
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2017, vol. 85, issue C, 81-94
Abstract:
Previous studies evaluating the welfare cost of air pollution have not paid much attention to its potential effect on mental health and subjective well-being (SWB). This paper attempts to fill the gap by investigating the impact of air pollution on several key dimensions, including mental health status, depressive symptoms, moment-to-moment happiness, and evaluative happiness. We match a nationwide longitudinal survey in China with local air quality and rich weather conditions according to the exact time and place of survey. By making use of variations in exposure to air pollution for the same individuals over time, we show that air pollution reduces hedonic happiness and increases the rate of depressive symptoms, while life satisfaction has little to do with the immediate air quality. Our results shed light on air pollution as an important contributor to the Easterlin paradox that economic growth may not bring more happiness.
Keywords: I31; Q53; Q51; Mental health; Depression; Hedonic happiness; Life satisfaction; Air pollution; Easterlin paradox (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (187)
Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069617302048
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
Related works:
Working Paper: Happiness in the Air: How Does a Dirty Sky Affect Mental Health and Subjective Well-being? (2017) ![Downloads](/downloads_econpapers.gif)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jeeman:v:85:y:2017:i:c:p:81-94
DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2017.04.001
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Environmental Economics and Management is currently edited by M.A. Cole, A. Lange, D.J. Phaneuf, D. Popp, M.J. Roberts, M.D. Smith, C. Timmins, Q. Weninger and A.J. Yates
More articles in Journal of Environmental Economics and Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).