Impacts of income growth on air pollution-related health risk: Exploiting objective and subjective measures

Abstract

China’s remarkable economic growth during the past four decades has resulted in a number of environmental problems. However, very few studies have addressed the interactive impact of both income and air pollution on public health. Thus, an innovative contribution of this paper is to test whether household income growth (HIG) can mitigate the health risks resulting from air pollution in China. More specifically, using pooled data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study and official statistical data, we try to estimate the interactive impact of HIG and air pollution-related health risks by employing an ordered logistic regression model, and compare these effects across different levels of pollution and education attainment. Our results indicate that HIG can significantly reduce the health risks of air pollution, especially those health risks caused by gaseous pollutants (SO2 and NOx). However, HIG fails to offset the adverse health effect induced by particulate matter (PM). Further, heterogeneity analysis shows that the health benefits from incomes vary greatly among different regions. HIG can mitigate the health risks of NOx to people in heavily polluted regions. In terms of education level, HIG can significantly raise the self-rated health level for groups with different educational backgrounds, but HIG of the highly educated group can significantly offset the health losses due to air pollution.