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The impact of air pollution on birthweight: evidence from grouped quantile regression

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  • Martina Pons

    (University of Bern)

Abstract

Estimates of the average effect of pollution on birthweight might not provide a complete picture if more vulnerable infants are disproportionately more affected. To address this, I focus on the distributional effect of particulate matter pollution (PM $$_{2.5}$$ 2.5 ) on birthweight. To estimate the impact, this paper uses grouped quantile regression, a methodology developed by Chetverikov et al. (Econometrica 84(2): 809–833, 2016), which allows estimating the impact of a group-level treatment on an individual-level outcome when there are group-level unobservables. The analysis reveals nonhomogeneous effects indicating that pollution disproportionately affects infants in the lower tail of the conditional distribution, whereas average effects suggest only minimal and not economically significant impact of pollution on birthweight. The findings are also consistent across different specifications.

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  • Martina Pons, 2022. "The impact of air pollution on birthweight: evidence from grouped quantile regression," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 279-296, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:empeco:v:62:y:2022:i:1:d:10.1007_s00181-021-02048-w
    DOI: 10.1007/s00181-021-02048-w
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    Cited by:

    1. Bernd Fitzenberger & Roger Koenker & José Machado & Blaise Melly, 2022. "Economic applications of quantile regression 2.0," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 1-6, January.
    2. Zhao Zhang & Caoyuan Ma & Aiping Wang, 2023. "Environmental Governance, Public Health Expenditure, and Economic Growth: Analysis in an OLG Model," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(4), pages 1-21, February.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Air pollution; Birthweight; Infant health; Quantile regression;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling

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