Some Empirical Indications of the Relationship Between Environmental Quality and Economic Development

The paper examines the relation between countries' state of the environment (defined as acceptable, marginal or unacceptable, according to values of ambient accumulation of pollutants) and stage of economic development (defined as low, middle and high income), using the concentration of sulphur dioxide in urban areas and dissolved oxygen in rivers. Univariate and ordered probit models are estimated for air and water quality. The results indicate that the probability of having acceptable environmental quality in a country increases with respect to the examined pollutants as the country moves to a higher state of economic development.