Air Pollution And Public Health

In the 40-year process of China's reform and opening-up,the speed of the process of industrialization and urbanization has gone beyond the other industrialized countries.Behind the rapid development of economy and the improvement of people's living standards,our country is facing a severe air pollution situation with the unreasonable energy consumption structure,the rapid increase of motor vehicle holdings and the use of industrial and household unclean fuels in the process of reform.Although the government has continuously issued a variety of air pollution prevention and control measures in recent years and has shown initial results,the air quality level of our country is still very low in the world.China's air quality is ranked No.177 in the world's 180 countries,according to the report on the Environmental Performance Index(EPI)in 2018.At present,the serious air pollution problem has become one of the main factors threatening the health of Chinese residents,which not only increases the risk of public illness,but also greatly shortens the life expectancy of Chinese residents,and its health hazards have been widely concerned by the public and the government.Serious air pollution seriously threatens the health of Chinese residents,not only increases the risk of public illness,but also greatly shortens the life expectancy of Chinese residents.Nowadays,the harm of air pollution to health has been paid more and more attention by the public and the government.Therefore,it is of practical significance to quantify the health effects of air pollution from the micro level of residents to enhance the public's understanding of the health hazards of air pollution and reduce the hidden cost of air pollution.At the same time,it provides theoretical support for the strategy of "promoting the construction of 'healthy China' and improving the health level of the people".In order to comprehensively investigate the health effects of air pollution,combined with environmental economics,health economics,microeconometric and other related theories,this paper uses the data of China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)in 2016 to identify the causality of air pollution on the cognitive ability of Chinese residents and the influence mechanism of self-reported health,as well as the influence of air pollution on the differences among different groups.First of all,based on the Sharp Regression Discontinuity design,this paper examines the influence of air quality level change on public cognitive ability from two dimensions of language ability and mathematical ability,and examines whether there are differences in the influence of air pollution on different groups based on different classification criteria.Secondly,based on the ordered Probit model,the influence of air pollution on the health level of the public is evaluated by using the index of self-reported health,which can comprehensively reflect the level of physical and mental health.When analyzing the difference of the effect of air pollution on the health of different people,the interaction between income and air pollution is introduced to investigate whether income can regulate the effect of air pollution on health.Based on the previous research,the innovation of this paper is reflected in:(1)Sharp Regression Discontinuity design shows that air pollution does have breakpoint effect on residents' cognitive ability.The upward jump of air quality grade will lead to the decline of residents' verbal ability and mathematical ability at the same time,and has a great negative impact on the verbal ability of people under 60 years of age,male groups and rural population,and has a significant impact on the mathematical ability of people over 60 years of age,female groups and urban population.(2)The estimation results of Ordered Probit model show that the aggravation of air pollution leads to the decrease of the overall health level of Chinese residents,and the rural and low income groups are more harmful to air pollution and bear greater health losses.(3)The level of health is mainly affected by personal living habits.Insisting on exercise and maintaining proper work can weaken the negative effect of air pollution on the health of residents,which is more obvious for the elderly.(4)Income has a regulating effect on the health effect of air pollution.Higher income levels can weaken the adverse effects of air pollution on health.Raising income can be used as an effective channel to reduce the negative impact of air pollution on public health.Based on the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward the following suggestions on how to improve the health level of residents:(1)Paying attention to the impact of air pollution on the central nervous system.Raising public awareness of the hidden intellectual cost of air pollution Raising public awareness of the hidden cost of air pollution,and remind residents to avoid the impact of air pollution in different ways.(2)Raise income while narrowing the gap between urban and rural areas.The balanced allocation of resources can help low-income and rural groups to improve their health.(3)Encourage the public to maintain good living habits.Proper exercise can not only improve physical quality physiologically,but also relieve anxiety and tension psychologically.At the same time,maintaining proper work can help residents reduce the negative effects of air pollution and improve the overall health level of Chinese residents.In the light of past research,the innovation of this paper is:First of all,in terms of research perspective,the effects of air pollution on the central nervous system and physical and mental health were investigated by using cognitive ability and self-reported of health.Secondly,in terms of research technique,this paper adopts the sharp regression discontinuity to identify the discontinuity effect of air quality grade jump on public health while effectively overcoming endogeny.In view of the fact that self-reported health is a sort data assigned to five grades,the Ordered Probit model is used to identify the impact of air pollution on residents' self-reported health.Finally,in the terms of sample selection,this paper makes use of the national survey data of China Family Panel Studies(CFPS)in 2016,the adult database is longitudinally combined with the children database and then is matched with the household economic database,and finally,the provincial macro variables are matched with the economic variable at the family level according to the provincial national standard code,which provides strong support for the assessment of the health effect of air pollution in this paper,fully considering the individual micro-features to make the evaluation results more robust.