Air pollution and child health in urban India

Description

A potential source of confounding in studies investigating the effect of indoor air pollution on child health is exposure to ambient air pollution. We examine this relationship by pairing city-level air pollution measures with child-level data from the National Family Health Survey (2005–06) for six cities in India. We address simultaneity in child health outcomes and the potential endogeneity of city-level air pollution using a bivariate probit regression framework with city fixed effects. Our findings show that: (1) an increase in ambient air pollution significantly raises child morbidity; (2) the type of cooking fuel used at home (a common measure of indoor pollution) is not a significant determinant of child morbidity once ambient air pollution and other child-, household-, and city-level covariates are controlled for; and (3) it is important to explicitly account for the correlation across various child health outcomes by modeling them jointly. Our results suggest that targeted citywide reductions in ambient air pollution could play an important role in improving child health.

Publication Date

1-1-2010

Keywords

Ambient air pollution, Child health, Bivariate probit, Fixed effects, NFHS

Conference

6th Annual Conference on Economic Development and Growth, 16�, December, 2010, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS