Air pollution and infant mortality: Evidence from China

Abstract

Using a newly assembled prefecture-city level dataset from 2004 to 2015, this paper examines the impact of air pollution on child mortality in China. To identify the causal effect, we exploit ventilation coefficient as the instrument for urban air pollution. We find that a 10 μg/m3 increase in annual PM2.5 concentration causes 163 infant deaths per 100,000 live births per year in a city.