Pollution and Mortality in the United States: Evidence from 1972–1988 | Tatyana Deryugina

Tatyana Deryugina is Associate Professor in the Department of Finance at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Tatyana will be discussing the paper Pollution and Mortality in the United States: Evidence from 1972–1988

Abstract:

We estimate the effect of sulphur dioxide (SO2) exposure on US population mortality over the period 1972–1988. Using changes in wind direction as an instrument for daily SO2 levels, we show that acute pollution exposure produces both short-run mortality displacement as well as lagged mortality effects in the month following exposure. On net, we estimate that a one-day, one part-per-billion increase in SO2 raises monthly mortality by 0.18 deaths per million. We then incorporate our estimates into a dynamic production model of health to quantify the lifelong effects of chronic pollution exposure. Model calculations of the effect of a permanent one-unit increase in SO2 exposure are 5–12 times larger than a simple linear scaling of the IV estimates of acute exposure.