Does Access to Health Care Mitigate Environmental Damages?

Jamie Mullins () and Corey White
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Jamie Mullins: University of Massachusetts Amherst

No 12717, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Differential access to health care is commonly cited as a source of heterogeneity in the health effects of environmental exposure, yet little causal evidence exists to support such claims. We test this hypothesis by utilizing exogenous variation in both access to health care and environmental exposure. Variation in access to care is derived from the roll-out of Community Health Centers (CHCs) across US counties in the 1960s and 1970s, and variation in environmental exposure comes from random year-to-year fluctuations in ambi-ent temperature within counties. We find that the provision of primary care through CHCs mitigates the relationship between heat and mortality by approximately 15%. Our results suggest that differential access to health care does contribute to observed heterogeneity in environmental health damages, and that improving access to primary care may be a useful means of mitigating harm from a warming climate.

Keywords: health care; access; climate; temperature; environment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I14 I18 Q50 Q52 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44 pages
Date: 2019-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published - published as 'Can access to health care mitigate the effects of temperature on mortality?' in: Journal of Public Economics, 2020, 191, 104259

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Working Paper: Does Access to Health Care Mitigate Environmental Damages? (2019)
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