IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/enreec/v37y2007i2p445-463.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Flows of Air Pollution, Ill Health and Welfare

Author

Listed:
  • Anni Huhtala
  • Eva Samakovlis

Abstract

We provide a theoretical framework for measuring welfare when pollution influences economic growth by impairing health and driving up defensive medical expenditures. We demonstrate the usefulness of our framework in practice by applying it to data from Swedish valuation studies designed according to the accounting principles suggested here. We estimate that the negative health effects of nitrogen dioxide emissions amount to 0.6% of GDP in Sweden. We also show that a corrective Pigouvian tax should internalize the direct disutility, reduced labor productivity, and increased healthcare expenditures caused by pollution. According to our calculations, harmful health impacts alone (excluding ecosystem effects) justify 65% of the current Swedish tax on nitrogen dioxide. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 2007

Suggested Citation

  • Anni Huhtala & Eva Samakovlis, 2007. "Flows of Air Pollution, Ill Health and Welfare," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 37(2), pages 445-463, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:37:y:2007:i:2:p:445-463
    DOI: 10.1007/s10640-006-9033-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10640-006-9033-z
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s10640-006-9033-z?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David E. Bloom & David Canning & Jaypee Sevilla, 2001. "The Effect of Health on Economic Growth: Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 8587, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. William D. Nordhaus, 2002. "The Health of Nations: The Contribution of Improved Health to Living Standards," NBER Working Papers 8818, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ibsa Mussa & Awel Feku & Mohammed Mussa, 2018. "Environmental Accounting and Auditing and Eco mark," Current Investigations in Agriculture and Current Research, Lupine Publishers, LLC, vol. 5(3), pages 660-662, November.
    2. Nathalie Mathieu-Bolh & Xavier Pautrel, 2014. "Environmental taxation, health and the life-cycle," Working Papers hal-00990256, HAL.
    3. repec:hal:wpaper:hal-00930936 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Mathieu-Bolh, Nathalie & Pautrel, Xavier, 2016. "Reassessing the effects of environmental taxation when pollution affects health over the life-cycle," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 52(PB), pages 310-321.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mohajan, Haradhan, 2011. "Valuing health impacts of the workers in Bangladesh due to air pollution," MPRA Paper 50697, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 13 May 2011.
    2. Mohajan, Haradhan, 2011. "Air pollution causes health effects and net national product of a country decreases: a theoretical framework," MPRA Paper 50858, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 May 2012.
    3. Vrachimis Konstantinos & Zachariadis Marios, 2013. "A contribution to the empirics of welfare growth," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 213-244, April.
    4. Ruiz-Tagle, Jaime & Tapia, Pablo, 2011. "Chile: early retirement, impatience and risk aversion," Revista CEPAL, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL), December.
    5. Ms. Lisa L Kolovich & Sakina Shibuya, 2016. "Middle East and Central Asia: A Survey of Gender Budgeting Efforts," IMF Working Papers 2016/151, International Monetary Fund.
    6. Laura Savu & Bogdan Copcea, 2018. "The Relationship Between Healthcare And Growth In Oecd Eastern European Countries," Annals - Economy Series, Constantin Brancusi University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 4, pages 92-101, August.
    7. Tiago Neves Sequeira, 2004. "Mortality rate and property rights in a model with human capital and R&D," Nova SBE Working Paper Series wp455, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Nova School of Business and Economics.
    8. Natacha Raffin, 2009. "Environmental health and education: Towards sustainable growth," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 09026, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    9. Esra N. Kilci, 2022. "Can We Increase Health Expenditure Per Capita Through Higher Economic Growth? Empirical Evidence from Turkey," EKOIST Journal of Econometrics and Statistics, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 0(36), pages 137-152, June.
    10. Richard S.J. Tol, 2002. "Climate, Development And Malaria: An Application Of Fund," Working Papers FNU-16, Research unit Sustainability and Global Change, Hamburg University, revised Sep 2002.
    11. Christopher P. P. Shafuda & Utpal Kumar De, 2020. "Government expenditure on human capital and growth in Namibia: a time series analysis," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, December.
    12. Martin Zagler & Georg Dürnecker, 2003. "Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(3), pages 397-418, July.
    13. Syeda Anam Fatima Rizvi, 2019. "Health Expenditures, Institutional Quality and Economic Growth," Post-Print hal-03341703, HAL.
    14. Arrow, Kenneth J. & Dasgupta, Partha & Goulder, Lawrence H. & Mumford, Kevin J. & Oleson, Kirsten, 2012. "Sustainability and the measurement of wealth," Environment and Development Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 317-353, June.
    15. Bell, Clive & Gersbach, Hans, 2013. "Growth and enduring epidemic diseases," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(10), pages 2083-2103.
    16. Colombier, Carsten, 2012. "Drivers of health care expenditure: Does Baumol's cost disease loom large?," FiFo Discussion Papers - Finanzwissenschaftliche Diskussionsbeiträge 12-5, University of Cologne, FiFo Institute for Public Economics.
    17. Badi H. Baltagi & Raffaele Lagravinese & Francesco Moscone & Elisa Tosetti, 2017. "Health Care Expenditure and Income: A Global Perspective," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 26(7), pages 863-874, July.
    18. Néstor Duch, 2005. "Vertical linkages, agglomeration and the organization of production in European regions," Working Papers 2005/6, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    19. Lamontagne, Erik & Over, Mead & Stover, John, 2019. "The economic returns of ending the AIDS epidemic as a public health threat," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(1), pages 104-108.
    20. Di Tella, Rafael & MacCulloch, Robert, 2008. "Gross national happiness as an answer to the Easterlin Paradox?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 86(1), pages 22-42, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    defensive expenditures; externalities; green accounting; respiratory illnesses; I10; O4; Q25;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I10 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - General
    • O4 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity
    • Q25 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Renewable Resources and Conservation - - - Water

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:kap:enreec:v:37:y:2007:i:2:p:445-463. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.