| China’s urbanization process has brought about an economic leap,and people’s living standards have been increasing,but at the same time it has also lead to serious environmental pollution problems.These problems have weakened residents’ public welfare in anotherr way,especially air pollution,which is seriously threatening the health of the residents.In the report of China’s 19th National Congress,General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we would carry out the Healthy China Strategy,which means that the protection of public health has risen to the national strategic level.Therefore,it is of great practical significance to study the health effects of air pollution.In order to comprehensively measure the impact of air pollution on public health,we identified it from both short-term and long-term perspectives based on the environmental economics and health economics theory.Firstly,we selected 2015 as the research base year,and apply the Poisson regression model commonly used in epidemiology to assess the public health impacts of Beijing’s annual average PM2.5 concentration in 2015.Secomdly,in order to identify the health hazards of air pollution,using perinatal mortality as a proxy for public health,we used the spatial lag of X model(SLX)to analyze the long-term public health effects of the PM2.5 concentration based on the data from 30 provinces and municipalities in China from 2002 to 2016.Finally,taknig the level of economic development as the threshold variable,we constructed the panel threshold model to solve the nonlinear characteristics of air pollution for perinatal death.The short-term health assessment results showed that if the average concentration of PM2.5 in 24 hour in Beijing decreased to 75μg/m3 in the national standard scenario,that would avoid about 57,755 cases of respiratory diseases,34,606 cases of cardiovascular disease,473,754 cases of pediatrics,1,163,606 cases of internal medicine,about 277,621 cases of acute bronchitis,and about 325,370 of asthma.According to the World Health Organization scenario,25μg/m3,that would avoid about 86,361 cases of respiratory diseases,about 51,137 cases of cardiovascular disease,705,168 cases of pediatrics,1,739,962 cases of internal medicine,371,195 cases of acute bronchus and about 457,518 cases of asthma.The results of long-term health effects of air pollution showed that air pollution had significant spatial correlation characteristics,showing high-high and low-low agglomeration.The increase of atmospheric pollution concentration was one of the main factors that significantly increase the death of perinatal infants.However,the increase of atmospheric pollution concentration in adjacent areas had not adversely affected the perinatal death in this area,and the concentration coefficient of air pollution in the adjacent area was not in line with expectations.It could be known from the coefficients of other variables that the improvement of economic development was conducive to reducing the death of perinatal children.When our material life is satisfied,we will pursuit the spirit needs and self-health,thus improving the level of economic development and meeting the basic needs of residents are the necessary protection of residents’ health;the increase of medical expenditure in the proportion of consumption would reduce the perinatal mortality rate,and people’s attention to their own health would lead to an increase in medical expenditure,which would prevent disease from happening in advance,so it would reduce the mortality rate of perinatal children;the increase of population density didn’t increase perinatal death;although the education level would improve the protection awareness of residents,the education level needs to be transformed for a long time,so the coefficient was not significant;the increase in health workers per thousand people has increased the perinatal mortality rate.This conclusion indicated that the national medical investment had not been transformed to the needs of the residents,and the concentration of medical resources had made the situation that residents couldn’t afford their medical expenses still happen.The results of the panel threshold model showed that the concentration of air pollution in the adjacent areas would show different effects depending on the economy.And it was showed that the concentration of air pollution in neighboring areas would stronger inhibit the perinatal mortality in this area,as the level of economic development increases.Further discussion,we found that after receiving high-level air pollution information in neighboring areas,the existence of "warning effect" would enable local governments and residents to take measures to protect their health in advance,and this effect would become more and more significant along with the growth of the economy.Those reasons has caused air pollution in neighboring areas to inhibit perinatal deaths in the region.Above all,we give some suggestions.Firstly,the related enterprises are supposed to further implement the Action Plan and various energy conservation and emission reduction work,and strive to reach international standards as soon as possible,and finally we can build a healthy China.Secondly,when dealing with atmospheric pollution,the government should consider both geographical and economic factors.Otherwise,the unilateral implementation of the governance strategy would not achieve the expected results.The implementation of the inter-regional joint prevention and control policy should be strengthened.This is the inevitable choice for establishing a green China.Thirdly,as a regulator of market operations,the government needs to differentially tax each industry according to its marginal pollution treatment costs,so as to compensate for the negative external costs caused by its pollution discharge,and put the tax revenue into the green environment and medical invests to directly and indirectly protec the residents’ health.Forthly,the government should improve the social welfare of pregnant women,such as a regular free physical and fetal testing of maternal groups.Finally,it is necessary to increase health education propaganda,establish a layer of publicity mechanism,form the effective learning channels from government departments to grassroots communities,and regularly conduct safety education lectures to minimize the health losses caused by air pollution.The main contributions of this paper can be summarized in three aspects.First,from the perspective of sample selection,we selected the average annual PM2.5 concentration of 30 provinces and municipalities in 2002-2016 to reflect the true atmospheric pollution concentration.Second,in terms of research methods,the 10m-high wind speed was used as an effective instrumental variable for air pollution concentration to deal with the endogenous problem of the model.Furthermore,in the research content,we uses the spatial self-lag model to capture the spatial spillover effect of air pollution,and uses the panel threshold model to explain the nonlinear relationship between air pollution and public health. |
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