Assessing the Relationship Between Air Quality, Wealth, and the First Wave of COVID-19 Diffusion and Mortality

Roberto Antonietti, Paolo Falbo () and Fulvio Fontini
Additional contact information
Paolo Falbo: University of Brescia

A chapter in Energy Transition, Climate Change, and COVID-19, 2021, pp 1-14 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract This study concerns the relationship between air quality, economic wealth, and COVID-19 diffusion and mortality around the world. Using different data sources, we show that the level of air quality, in terms of particulate (PM 2.5) concentrations, does not significantly contribute to explain the diffusion of COVID-19 and the related mortality rates. On the contrary, GDP per capita significantly correlates with the diffusion of COVID-19 and related mortality, and the result holds in each day of March and April 2020 in which COVID-19 infections and deaths are counted. However, when we cluster countries by level of wealth, trade openness, sectoral structure, CO2 emissions, and climate conditions, we find that higher concentrations of PM 2.5 correspond to more infections and deaths, but only in high-income countries.

Keywords: COVID-19; Pollution; PM2.5; Wealth; Cross-country analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:sprchp:978-3-030-79713-3_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783030797133

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-79713-3_1

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().