Environmental regulations on air pollution in China and their impact on infant mortality

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Abstract

This study explores the impact of environmental regulations in China on infant mortality. In 1998, the Chinese government imposed stringent air pollution regulations, in one of the first large-scale regulatory attempts in a developing country. We find that the infant mortality rate fell by 20 percent in the treatment cities designated as "Two Control Zones." The greatest reduction in mortality occurred during the neonatal period, highlighting an important pathophysiologic mechanism, and was largest among infants born to mothers with low levels of education. The finding is robust to various alternative hypotheses and specifications. Further, a falsification test using deaths from causes unrelated to air pollution supports these findings.

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The lasting impact of childhood health and circumstance.

Anne Case, Angela R Fertig, Christina Paxson (2005)

We quantify the lasting effects of childhood health and economic circumstances on adult health, employment and socioeconomic status, using data from a birth cohort that has been followed from birth into middle age. Controlling for parental income, education and social class, children who experience poor health have significantly lower educational attainment, poorer health, and lower social status as adults. Childhood health and circumstance appear to operate both through their impact on initial adult health and economic status, and through a continuing direct effect of prenatal and childhood health in middle age. Overall, our findings suggest more attention be paid to health as a potential mechanism through which intergenerational transmission of economic status takes place: cohort members born into poorer families experienced poorer childhood health, lower investments in human capital and poorer health in early adulthood, all of which are associated with lower earnings in middle age-the years in which they themselves become parents.

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Association of fine particulate matter from different sources with daily mortality in six U.S. cities.

F Laden, L Neas, D W Dockery … (2000)

Previously we reported that fine particle mass (particulate matter [less than and equal to] 2.5 microm; PM(2.5)), which is primarily from combustion sources, but not coarse particle mass, which is primarily from crustal sources, was associated with daily mortality in six eastern U.S. cities (1). In this study, we used the elemental composition of size-fractionated particles to identify several distinct source-related fractions of fine particles and examined the association of these fractions with daily mortality in each of the six cities. Using specific rotation factor analysis for each city, we identified a silicon factor classified as soil and crustal material, a lead factor classified as motor vehicle exhaust, a selenium factor representing coal combustion, and up to two additional factors. We extracted daily counts of deaths from National Center for Health Statistics records and estimated city-specific associations of mortality with each source factor by Poisson regression, adjusting for time trends, weather, and the other source factors. Combined effect estimates were calculated as the inverse variance weighted mean of the city-specific estimates. In the combined analysis, a 10 microg/m(3) increase in PM(2.5) from mobile sources accounted for a 3.4% increase in daily mortality [95% confidence interval (CI), 1.7-5.2%], and the equivalent increase in fine particles from coal combustion sources accounted for a 1.1% increase [CI, 0.3-2.0%). PM(2.5) crustal particles were not associated with daily mortality. These results indicate that combustion particles in the fine fraction from mobile and coal combustion sources, but not fine crustal particles, are associated with increased mortality.