EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The Impact of Air Pollution on Infant Mortality: Evidence from Geographic Variation in Pollution Shocks Induced by a Recession

Kenneth Y. Chay and Michael Greenstone

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2003, vol. 118, issue 3, 1121-1167

Abstract: The 1981–1982 recession induced substantial variation across sites in air pollution reductions. This is used to estimate the impact of total suspended particulates (TSPs) on infant mortality. We find that a 1-percent reduction in TSPs results in a 0.35 percent decline in the infant mortality rate at the county level, implying that 2500 fewer infants died from 1980–1982 than would have in the absence of the TSPs reductions. Most of these effects are driven by fewer deaths occurring within one month of birth, suggesting that fetal exposure is a potential pathophysiologic mechanism. The analysis also reveals nonlinear effects of TSPs pollution and greater sensitivity of black infant mortality at the county level. Importantly, the estimates are stable across a variety of specifications.

Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (657)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/00335530360698513 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Impact of Air Pollution on Infant Mortality: Evidence from Geographic Variation in Pollution Shocks Induced by a Recession (1999) Downloads
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:qjecon:v:118:y:2003:i:3:p:1121-1167.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:118:y:2003:i:3:p:1121-1167.