Abstract
Differences in economic development, public services, production, and lifestyle between urban and rural areas lead to significant differences in people’s attitudes and abilities to cope with environmental pollution. Furthermore, environmental pollution has heterogeneous effects on the health of individuals in urban and rural areas. The article takes the health of left-behind children as an entry point to analyze the impact of haze pollution on the health of urban and rural left-behind children. Using children’s survey data from the China Health and Nutrition Survey and the urban and rural raster PM2.5 data from 2000 to 2015, this study applies a logit model to analyze the heterogeneity of the impact of haze pollution on the health of left-behind children. This research finds that, first, the health effects of haze pollution on rural left-behind children are more severe than those on rural children not left behind. Moreover, the same results are not present in the sample of urban left-behind children. Second, the health of left-behind children is more vulnerable to haze pollution than the others when neither parent is at home in rural areas. Third, no evidence proves that haze pollution has more severe health effects on rural children aged 0–6 years with parents away from home. Meanwhile, haze pollution will more easily influence the health status of left-behind children aged 7 years and above in rural areas due to their parents’ absence. Fourth, the finding that haze pollution significantly affects the health of left-behind children with parents away from home only applies to the central and western rural samples in China.
Highlights
The increase in the number of hazy days poses a great threat to human health [1].The Human Development Report 2019 published by the United Nations DevelopmentProgram states that environmental pollution and environmental disasters tend to hit vulnerable groups more severely and are relatively more harmful
Columns (1)–(3) of Table 2 are the regression results for left-behind children whose sample is living in rural areas
The regression results of the three logit models reveal that the coefficient of the PM2.5 pollution indicator in rural areas is significantly positive at the
Summary
The increase in the number of hazy days poses a great threat to human health [1]. Program states that environmental pollution and environmental disasters tend to hit vulnerable groups more severely and are relatively more harmful. In cities with relatively better public services and environmental awareness, parents cope with the negative effects of environmental pollution on their children’s health by paying for preventive equipment or being absent from work [7]. Left-behind children in rural areas lack proper care and protection, especially effective interventions to cope with haze pollution. The absence of their parents engender children’s exposure to the haze environment. This work uses relatively detailed and valid data to perform an empirical test on the relationship between environmental pollution and the health of left-behind children in urban and rural areas.
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