Air pollution, foetal mortality, and long-term health: Evidence from the Great London Smog

Alastair Ball ()

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper provides new evidence on the consequences of foetal exposure to high levels of pollution for the risk of stillbirth, and for the long-term health and labour market outcomes of those that survive. Variation in in utero exposure comes from a persistent weather system that affected London for five days in December 1952, preventing the dispersion of atmospheric pollution. This increased levels of total suspended particulate matter by around 300%. Unaffected counties in England and Wales are used in a differences-in-differences design to identify the short and long-term effects. Historical registrar data for the nine months following the smog show a 2% increase in reported stillbirths in London relative to national trends. As foetal deaths often go unreported, the exercise is then repeated for registered births. The data show around 1600 fewer live births then expected in London, or a reduction of 3% against national trends. Survivors are then identified by district and quarter of birth, and their health and labour market outcomes observed at fifty and sixty years old. Differences-in-differences estimates show that survivors are in general less healthy, less likely to have a formal qualification, and less likely to be employed than those unaffected by the smog.

Keywords: Atmospheric pollution; Great London Smog; Fetal exposure; Health; Education; Employment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I10 I18 Q53 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11-01, Revised 2015-03-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-ene, nep-env and nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/63229/1/MPRA_paper_63229.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Lifelong Costs of Urban Smogs (2017)
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:pra:mprapa:63229

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().