Does Animal Feeding Operation Pollution Hurt Public Health? A National Longitudinal Study of Health Externalities Identified by Geographic Shifts in Livestock Production

Stacy Sneeringer ()

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2009, vol. 91, issue 1, 124-137

Abstract: The Environmental Protection Agency is currently gathering data to regulate livestock facilities under the Clean Air Act, legislation that purports to protect public health. To set rational policy, estimates of health externalities associated with livestock farming are necessary. This study uses geographic shifts in the industry to measure the impact of pollution on infant health. The article finds that a doubling of production leads to a 7.4% increase in infant mortality. This finding is robust with respect to the inclusion of multiple fixed and time-varying controls. The mortality increases are driven by elevated levels of respiratory diseases, providing suggestive evidence of an air pollution mechanism. Copyright 2009, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (27)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/j.1467-8276.2008.01161.x (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:oup:ajagec:v:91:y:2009:i:1:p:124-137

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Agricultural Economics is currently edited by Madhu Khanna, Brian E. Roe, James Vercammen and JunJie Wu

More articles in American Journal of Agricultural Economics from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().