Caution, Drivers! Children Present: Traffic, Pollution, and Infant Health

Christopher Knittel, Douglas Miller and Nicholas Sanders

No 17222, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Since the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (CAAA), atmospheric concentration of local pollutants has fallen drastically. A natural question is whether further reductions will yield additional health benefits. We further this research by addressing two related research questions: (1) what is the impact of automobile driving (and especially congestion) on ambient air pollution levels, and (2) what is the impact of modern air pollution levels on infant health? Our setting is California (with a focus on the Central Valley and Southern California) in the years 2002-2007. Using an instrumental variables approach that exploits the relationship between traffic, ambient weather conditions, and various pollutants, our findings suggest that ambient pollution levels, specifically particulate matter, still have large impacts on weekly infant mortality rates. Our results also illustrate the importance of weather controls in measuring pollution's impact on infant mortality.

JEL-codes: I18 Q51 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-hea
Note: CH EEE EH PE
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (44)

Published as Christopher R. Knittel & Douglas L. Miller & Nicholas J. Sanders, 2016. "Caution, Drivers! Children Present: Traffic, Pollution, and Infant Health," Review of Economics and Statistics, vol 98(2), pages 350-366.

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17222.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Caution, Drivers! Children Present: Traffic, Pollution, and Infant Health (2016)
Working Paper: Caution, Drivers! Children Present: Traffic, Pollution, and Infant Health (2011)
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:nbr:nberwo:17222

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w17222

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().