sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy China’s Huai River policy.pdf

Evidence on the impact of sustained exposure to air pollution on life expectancy from China’s Huai River policy Yuyu Chena,1, Avraham Ebensteinb,1, Michael Greenstonec,d,1,2, and Hongbin Lie,1 aApplied Economics Department, Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; bDepartment of Economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Mount Scopus 91905, Israel; cDepartment of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02142; dNational Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA 02138; and eChina Data Center and Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China Edited by William C. Clark, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and approved May 28, 2013 (received for review January 2, 2013) This paper’s findings suggest that an arbitrary Chinese policy that causes). The estimates suggest that the 500 million residents of greatly increases total suspended particulates (TSPs) air pollution Northern China during the 1990s experienced a loss of more than is causing the 500 million residents of Northern China to lose more 2.5 billion life years owing to the Huai River policy. than 2.5 billion life years of life expectancy. The quasi-experimen- Furthermore, a research design based on this policy allows for a tal empirical approach is based on China’s Huai River policy, which unique opportunity to estimate the effect of TSPs on human health, provided free winter heating via the provision of coal for boilers in which can be applied to other countries, time periods, and settings. cities north of the Huai River but denied heat to the south. Using The resulting estimates suggest that long-term exposure to an a regression discontinuity design based on distance from the Huai additional 100 μg/m3 of TSPs is associated with a reduction in