THESIS
2018
81 pages : color illustrations, color maps ; 30 cm
Abstract
Air pollution is one of the most important environmental health risks in modern society. A clear
understanding of the relationship between air pollution and health is important for policy-making,
however, current literature in Hong Kong is mostly composed of time-series and observational
studies which may suffer from endogeneity bias. This study uses an instrumental variable
approach to estimate the causal effect of air pollution on mortality in Hong Kong. The
instruments are based on transboundary air pollution and I show that Hong Kong’s air quality is
strongly affected by mainland China’s air pollution, wind patterns and distances from the
emission sources. I estimate that a 10 unit increase in API will cause a 4.56% increase in
monthly mortality. Air pollution primarily affe...[
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Air pollution is one of the most important environmental health risks in modern society. A clear
understanding of the relationship between air pollution and health is important for policy-making,
however, current literature in Hong Kong is mostly composed of time-series and observational
studies which may suffer from endogeneity bias. This study uses an instrumental variable
approach to estimate the causal effect of air pollution on mortality in Hong Kong. The
instruments are based on transboundary air pollution and I show that Hong Kong’s air quality is
strongly affected by mainland China’s air pollution, wind patterns and distances from the
emission sources. I estimate that a 10 unit increase in API will cause a 4.56% increase in
monthly mortality. Air pollution primarily affects deaths from cardiovascular and respiratory
(CVR) diseases and the elderly are the most vulnerable group. To understand how the air
pollution effect changes over the years, I conduct sub-period analyses and find that the effect has
been diminishing over the years. Exploratory analyses reveal that the diminishing effect is likely
to be driven by post-SARS medical improvement initiatives and the development of community-based
healthcare services in early 2000s, and not by changes in avoidance behaviors and public
awareness of air pollution. These findings show that the air pollution effect can be different in a
high-income and high-pollution context and a well-established medical system can mitigate the
health effect of air pollution.
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