Transportation Infrastructure, Population Mobility, and Public Health

Fen Zhang, Tianyi Song (), Xiang Cheng, Tianhao Li and Ziming Yang
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Fen Zhang: School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Tianyi Song: College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong 999077, China
Xiang Cheng: School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Tianhao Li: School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China
Ziming Yang: School of Economics and Management, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 20, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: This paper constructs an overlapping generations model, including health human capital, to investigate the impact of transportation investment on public health with population mobility. The theoretical analysis shows that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between transportation infrastructure and population flow, which also exists between transportation and health. Health is affected by transportation from three aspects: positive output effect, negative substitution effect on public health investment, and an indirect effect through population flow. In the empirical part, considered with the infectious diseases, we found that the more intensive the traffic facilities, the greater the population flow, and therefore, the traffic facilities will have a negative impact on health. When population mortality is used to measure the level of public health, transportation improvement will significantly enhance public health with an inverted U-shaped relationship, which is consistent with the theoretical portion.

Keywords: government expenditure; transportation infrastructure; population mobility; public health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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