Every Breath You Take—Every Dollar You’ll Make: The Long-Term Consequences of the Clean Air Act of 1970

Adam Isen, Maya Rossin-Slater and Reed Walker

Journal of Political Economy, 2017, vol. 125, issue 3, 848 - 902

Abstract: This paper examines the long-term impacts of early childhood exposure to air pollution on adult outcomes using US administrative data. We exploit changes in air pollution driven by the 1970 Clean Air Act to analyze the difference in outcomes between cohorts born in counties before and after large improvements in air pollution relative to those same cohorts born in counties that had no improvements. We find a significant relationship between pollution exposure in the year of birth and later-life outcomes. A higher pollution level in the year of birth is associated with lower labor force participation and lower earnings at age 30.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (156)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/691465 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/691465 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

Related works:
Working Paper: Every Breath You Take - Every Dollar You'll Make: The Long-Term Consequences of the Clean Air Act of 1970 (2014)
Working Paper: Every Breath You Take, Every Dollar You'll Make: The Long-Term Consequences of the Clean Air Act of 1970 (2013)
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:ucp:jpolec:doi:10.1086/691465

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Political Economy from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().