The causal effects of long-term PM2.5 exposure on COVID-19 in India

Takahiro Yamada, Hiroyuki Yamada and Muthukumara Mani
Additional contact information
Muthukumara Mani: The World Bank

No 2021-002, Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University

Abstract: This study investigates the causal effects of long-term PM2.5 exposure on COVID-19 deaths, fatality rates and cases in India by using an instrumental variables approach based on thermal inversion episodes. The estimation results indicate that a 1% increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 leads to an increase in COVID-19 deaths by 5.7 percentage points and an increase in the COVID-19 fatality rate by 0.027 percentage points, but this exposure is not necessarily correlated with COVID-19 cases. People with underlying health conditions such as respiratory illness caused by exposure to air pollution might have a higher risk of death following SARS-CoV-2 infection. This finding might also apply to other countries where high levels of air pollution are a critical issue in terms of development and public health.

Keywords: COVID-19; Ambient Air Pollution; Instrumental Variables Approach; Thermal Inversion; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I15 O13 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2021-01-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ies.keio.ac.jp/upload/pdf/en/DP2021-002.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Causal Effects of Long-Term PM2.5 Exposure on COVID-19 in India (2021)
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:keo:dpaper:2021-002

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series from Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University ().