The Mortality and Medical Costs of Air Pollution: Evidence from Changes in Wind Direction

We estimate the causal effects of acute fine particulate matter exposure on mortality, health care use, and medical costs among the US elderly using Medicare data. We instrument for air pollution using changes in local wind direction and develop a new approach that uses machine learning to estimate...

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Veröffentlicht in:The American economic review Jg. 109; H. 12; S. 4178
Hauptverfasser: Deryugina, Tatyana, Heutel, Garth, Miller, Nolan H, Molitor, David, Reif, Julian
Format: Journal Article
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: United States 01.12.2019
Schlagworte:
I12
J14
Q51
Q53
ISSN:0002-8282
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Zusammenfassung:We estimate the causal effects of acute fine particulate matter exposure on mortality, health care use, and medical costs among the US elderly using Medicare data. We instrument for air pollution using changes in local wind direction and develop a new approach that uses machine learning to estimate the life-years lost due to pollution exposure. Finally, we characterize treatment effect heterogeneity using both life expectancy and generic machine learning inference. Both approaches find that mortality effects are concentrated in about 25 percent of the elderly population.
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ISSN:0002-8282
DOI:10.1257/aer.20180279