Air Pollution, Health, and Socioeconomic Status: The Effect of Outdoor Air Quality on Childhood Asthma

Matthew J. Neidell, University of Chicago

This paper examines the effect of air pollution on child hospitalizations for asthma using a unique zip code level panel data set. The effect of pollution is identified using naturally occurring seasonal variations in pollution within zip codes. I also improve on past work by analyzing how the effect of pollution varies by age, by including measures of avoidance behavior, and by allowing the effect to vary by socioeconomic status (SES). Of the pollutants considered, carbon monoxide has a significant effect on a hospitalizations among children ages 1 to 18. In addition, households respond to information about pollution with avoidance behavior, especially high SES families, suggesting that is important to account for these endogenous responses when measuring the causal effect of pollution on health. Finally, the net effect of pollution is much greater for children of low SES, indicating that pollution is one potential mechanism by which SES affects health.