Industrialization,indoor and ambient air quality,and elderly mental health

The health risks from indoor and ambient air pollution create a considerable burden to global economic development and health, especially in economies within an aging society. Previous research has established the adverse effects of air pollution on health. However, most studies do not focus on the simultaneous effect of indoor and ambient air pollution nor its health risks to the older population. This study examines the impact of exposure to both indoor and ambient air pollution for the same individuals over time on mental health by using a nationally representative longitudinal survey for middle-aged and elderly individuals in China. We find that both indoor and ambient air pollution have an adverse effect on elderly mental health and significantly increases the likelihood of having depressive symptoms. We provide evidence that the effect of indoor and ambient air pollution is associated more with less educated and females.     

Air pollution and procyclical mortality: Evidence from China

There is growing evidence that in developed countries, mortality rises (falls) in economic booms (busts). However, little is known about the cyclical pattern of mortality in developing countries. Using China's city-year data, we find that the total mortality in China also exhibits procyclical fluctuations. In exploring the mechanisms, we find that air pollution is one of the reasons for procyclical fluctuations in total mortality. Specifically, economic booms lead to severe air pollution, worsening human health and thus increasing death rates. Moreover, we find that changes in lifestyles may not be an important reason for procyclical mortality in China.     

Air pollution and brain drain: Evidence from college graduates in China

This paper provides one of the few evidence about migration responses among talents to air pollution. Specifically, we investigate the impact of PM_2.5 concentration on job location decisions of Chinese college graduates at the beginning of their professional careers. The results indicate that a 10-unit increase in PM_2.5 concentration raises college graduates' probability to leave their current city by 10% point. We also find larger impacts on graduates from elite colleges and less polluted hometowns. Our empirical results are consistent with a simple model in which the location choice of college graduates depends on their wage payment and air pollution. Our findings supplement existent literature in documenting important ways in which air pollution may associate with the loss of highly-educated talents.     

贫困是否影响农村中老年人的精神健康——基于CHARLS数据的实证研究

农村老年人在经济上是最为弱势的群体,他们的贫困发生率远远高于城市老人。贫困不仅体现为物质上的剥夺,更会引起认知退化和抑郁等精神健康上的问题。文章使用中国健康与养老追踪调查数据,实证考察经济状况对农村中老年人精神健康的影响。多层线性模型估计结果表明：家庭人均年收入每提高一千元,反映认知状况的情景记忆显著提高0.132分、精神状态显著提高0.121分,而反映抑郁程度的CES-D则显著下降0.293分。进一步分析表明,收入对精神健康的促进作用对高收入者更大。考虑到农村更加严重的老龄化程度,通过减贫实现农村中老年人精神健康状况的改善将具有重要的现实意义。     

Effects of temperature on mental health: Evidence and mechanisms from China

We study how temperature exposure affects mental health in a developing country using data from China Family Panel Studies (CFPS). We find that exposure to high temperatures leads to worse mental health. Specifically, one additional day above 27 °C during the past week would increase individuals' total CESD 8 score by 1.5%, and the likelihood of having severe mental illness by 6.2% relative to a day in the reference temperature bin. We further estimate the potential mitigating effects of air conditioning on the relationship between temperature and mental health. We find that the identified relationship is mitigated by installing air conditioning. We also test some mechanisms through which temperature might impact mental health, including physical health status and sleep. We further discuss the overall health expenditure burden associated with climate change.     

Parental Education and Child Health: Evidence from China*

This paper examines the effect of parental, household and community character‐istics on the health of children in China. We find that birth order, death of elder siblings, use of prenatal care and alcohol consumption by the mother when pregnant have statistically significant effects on the health of children. Although parental education does not have a significant direct effect on child health, it does affect mothers’ behavior during pregnancy and inflfluences the use of health inputs, indirectly impacting the health of children. The research findings have important implications for both family planning programs and broader social policies in China.     

Retirement and health: Evidence from China

One typical feature of China's pension system is that retirement is mandatory. By exploiting the exogenous change created by this mandatory retirement policy, we use the mandatory retirement age as an instrument for retirement status to examine the effect of retirement on individual health using data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). Our main finding is that the probability of “fair” or “poor” self-reported health among white-collar workers decreases by 34 percentage point after retirement. This result is generally robust to different model specifications, alternative measures of health, and different subsamples. In addition, we deliver evidence that increased health-related exercises and the cultivation of a better lifestyle are two possible channels through which retirement affects health.     

空气污染感知与退休后再就业意愿——来自CLDS2016的证据

具有再就业能力和意愿的退休群体是有待激活和妥善配置的潜在人力资源,对于实现积极老龄化、缓解社会养老负担均有重要意义,而对于空气污染的感知和担忧可能是阻止该群体重返劳动力市场的重要致因。基于CLDS2016调查数据,研究证实了空气污染感知对退休群体再就业意愿的抑制作用,而城市层面的空气质量降级现象佐证了这一结论。此外,具有较高物质资本和人力资本存量的退休群体的主客观空气污染偏离度较低,即更易低估环境污染现状并保持乐观。然而,互联网的使用将导致对空气污染现状的普遍高估,并使偏离程度加重。本研究着重探讨了空气污染在感知端对于劳动供给行为的重要影响,为洞悉阻碍退休群体再就业因素提供了来自环境质量方面的证据。     

Privatization and Labor Cost Savings: Evidence from Health Care Services

This study examines whether privatization is associated with low public sector health care wages and with low probability of public sector employment for health care providers. Findings suggest that privatization contributes significantly to low wages of union health care providers in the public sector. Privatization also contributes to a low probability of public sector employment in this industry, especially to unionized workers. These results indicate that competition enhancing policy can promote lower labor costs even in a service sector that employs a highly skilled work force.

Health care cost of floods: Evidence from Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan

Using the difference-in-difference (DID) method, this study uses Typhoon Morakot, which occurred in August 2009, as an example to estimate the effect of flooding on health care cost burden. The main data source is the medical claims records of a cohort of three million patients in Taiwan’s National Health Insurance system. By examining flood-related physiological diseases and disaster-related mental illnesses, our results indicate that the increase in outpatient health care costs resulting from the flood caused by the typhoon is approximately NTD 8.95 billion (USD 280 million), equivalent to approximately 69% of the annual special budget for flooding prevention during the period 2006–2019 in Taiwan. Moreover, the increase in outpatient expenditure for mental illnesses is nearly 10 times that of physiological diseases. An important implication of our findings is that the cost of preventing natural disasters, such as floods, can be offset by saving health care costs, particularly for mental illnesses. Our results also suggest that in addition to providing safe drinking water and indoor residual spraying, offering continuous post-disaster mental health services can further save health care expenditures caused by natural disasters.     

Health and Financial Strain: Evidence from the Survey of Consumer Finances

Using data from the Survey of Consumer Finances, this study examines the relationship between health status and financial strain controlling for the dual endogeneity between the two factors. Simultaneous two-stage probit models are estimated for self-reported health status and three measures of financial strain. The results from all three models indicate that poor health significantly increases the probability of financial strain. There is little evidence that financial strain contributes to poor health. The findings suggest that severe health conditions may result in larger financial burdens while large financial burdens are unlikely to accelerate a decline in health status. In the end, health may be contributing to widening financial disparities, especially among the poor who are in poor health.     

The effects of exposure to high temperatures during pregnancy on adolescent mental health: Evidence from China

This paper provides the first study to explore the relationship between exposure to ambient temperatures during pregnancy and adolescent mental health in China. The results show that experiencing one more hot day relative to local historical contemporaneous average values during pregnancy significantly increases the likelihood of mental health disorders in adolescence. The impact is larger in the first and second trimesters. Individuals born in the northern region and whose mothers work in agriculture are more vulnerable to high temperatures. Prenatal exposure to hot days is more harmful to the mental health of older adolescents. Additionally, the adverse effects are similar for both men and women and individuals with rural and urban hukou. Biological effects, income effects, and human capital accumulation might be three operative channels of the impact. These findings add to the evidence on the lasting health effects of early life exposure to climatic shocks and call for policy interventions during pregnancy.     

Indoor air quality and health: Empirical evidence from fluoride pollution in China

In this paper we conducted an econometric analysis to investigate the impacts of fluoride pollution on health. Burning high-fluoride-content coal indoors is the primary source of fluoride pollution in Guizhou Province of China. Exploiting longitudinal data from China Health and Nutrition Survey, we applied individual fixed effect models and triple difference models to examine the effects of whether households use coal as domestic fuel. The results showed that fluoride pollution from coal burning significantly increases the diastolic and systolic blood pressure levels of adults. And the pollution also leads to higher likelihood of underweight. Our further analysis indicated that fluoride pollution from coal burning during the infant period greatly reduces the height and weight of children in their childhood and adolescence periods. We also explore the mechanism by investigating the influence of fluoride pollution exposure on birthweight and find evidence that fluoride pollution had a negative impact on prenatal development.     

Socioeconomic Determinants of Child Health: Empirical Evidence from Indonesia

This paper characterizes the socioeconomic determinants of child health using height‐for‐age z‐score (HAZ), a long‐run measure of chronic nutritional deficiency. We construct a panel data that follows children between ages 3 and 59 months in 1993 through the 1997 and 2000 waves of the Indonesian Family Life Survey. We use this data to identify the various child‐level, household‐level and community‐level factors that affect children's health. Our findings indicate that household income has a large and statistically significant role in explaining improvements in HAZ. We also find a strong positive association between parental height and HAZ. At the community level, we find that provision of electricity and the availability of paved roads are positively associated with improvements in HAZ. Finally, in comparison to community‐level factors, household‐level characteristics play a large role in explaining the variation in HAZ. These findings suggest that policies that address the demand‐side constraints have greater potential to improve children's health outcomes in the future.     

人口集聚、空气污染与经济可持续发展

探究人口集聚、空气污染与经济可持续发展的关系是关乎国家经济高质量发展的关键性议题。选取 266 个中国地级以上城市作为研究基点,精研人口、环境同经济之间的关系,结果表明：人口集聚对经济可持续发展影响具有空间溢出效应,人口集聚与经济可持续发展之间存在非线性关系;空气污染与经济可持续发展二者之间存在非线性关系,且具有空间溢出效应;人口集聚对经济可持续发展的影响存在空气污染的中介效应。研究逻辑框架表明,人口集聚、空气污染与经济可持续发展者之间的关系存在“人口集聚—空气污染—经济可持续发展”的解释机制。最终得出结论：人口集聚导致城市拥挤城市耗能和排放增加加重了空气污染从而对经济可持续发展形成一定的制约。空气污染的存在削弱了人口集聚对经济可持续发展的促进作用,因此,要更加注意短期内人口快速集聚对经济可持续发展形成的制约,警惕人口过度集聚对空气污染的影响及由此对经济可持续发展带来的负面影响。升擢城市“温度”、拓展城市“宽度”、增益城市“浓度”、聚焦城市“密度”,引导人口在区域范围内合理适度集聚,形成人口集聚合理布局,以技术创新发展方式转变和生产率提升减轻人口集聚对空气污染的负面影响从而降低由于空气污染造成的对经济可持续发展的制约,推动经济可持续绿色发展。