Air Pollution and Internal Migration in the United States

Michael Keller, Christopher Knittel, Benjamin Krebs and Simon Luechinger

No 35317, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We estimate the effect of PM₂.₅ pollution on migration between commuting zones in the United States from 2005-2019. To account for the correlation between origin and destination commuting zones’ pollution levels and potential endogeneity, we estimate a dyadic migration model and isolate permanent changes in origin and destination pollution emanating from distant coal-fired power plants. Annual panel and long-difference estimates indicate that air pollution plays a key role in relocation decisions. For the typical commuting zone, an isolated average 2005-2019 PM₂.₅ concentration decrease of 3.85 μg/m³ would avert out-migration and increase in-migration, totaling 2 percent of the population annually.

JEL-codes: Q53 R23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-06
Note: EEE PE
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35317.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

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:nbr:nberwo:35317

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w35317
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

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 ().