Air quality, infant mortality, and the Clean Air Act of 1970

Abstract

Long-standing air pollution concerns have prompted the evaluation of the effects of pollution in various settings, particularly in emerging countries. Here, the relationship between pollution and infant mortality is examined in a developing country context in which pollution levels far exceed those in previous studies. It has been suggested that the relationship between pollution and fatalities may be non-linear and that the costs of avoidance behavior may differ significantly across contexts; thus, prior risk estimates may not generalize externally. Using a novelinstrumental variables approach that leverages weather-related thermal inversions as exogenous sources of variation in pollution, this work shows that an increase of 1 parts-per-billion in carbon monoxide over a week leads to an increase in infant mortality of 0.0032 per 100,000 births, while a 1 microgram-per-cubic-meter increase in particulate matter leads to an increase of 0.24 per 100,000 births. These findings suggest that the damages from air pollution may be much larger in developing countries than estimated previously, particularly those attributable to carbon monoxide – an understudied pollutant in this context. – AI-generated abstract.