Environmental health risks, welfare and GDP

Edward B. Barbier and Angela Cindy Emefa Mensah

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 2025, vol. 133, issue C

Abstract: A seemingly overlooked impact on economic well-being is rising health risks attributed to the environment, which are impacting welfare worldwide. We modify the consumption-equivalent macroeconomic welfare measure developed by Jones and Klenow (2016) to include the impacts of these risks on life expectancy and the utility flow of the average individual. Employing the Global Burden of Disease dataset of environmentally related mortality and morbidity across 163 countries over 1990–2019, we compare welfare with and without environmental health risks to GDP per capita for each country relative to the United States. In addition, we examine the extent to which welfare in rich and poor countries converge. Across all 163 countries over 1990–2019, adjusting welfare for environmental health risks is significant when compared to income (GDP) per capita or to welfare that excludes these risks. This divergence in welfare is especially prominent among low and lower middle-income countries.

Keywords: Environmental health risks; Human capital; Global burden of disease; Low and middle-income countries; Welfare measures (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 O57 Q51 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069625000907
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:133:y:2025:i:c:s0095069625000907

DOI: 10.1016/j.jeem.2025.103206

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 ().