Health Outcomes

• Mortality, Birth outcomes

Health Outcome List:

• Mortality (infant death, fetal death), Birth outcomes (low birth weight)

Environmental Agents

List of Environmental Agents:

• Air pollutants (ozone (O3)), Carbon monoxide (CO), Particulate matter (PM10/coarse)

Source of Environmental Agents:

• Not available

Economic Evaluation / Methods and Source

Type:

• Cost-benefit analysis (CBA)

Cost Measures:

• Infant deaths
• infant mortality rates

Potential Cost Measures:

• Willingness to pay for pollution reduction
• costs of reducing pollution

Benefits Measures:

• Value of infant lives saved due to pollution reduction

Potential Benefits Measures:

• Benefits of pollution abatement (e.g., effects of pollution levels on housing prices)

Location:

• California

Models Used:

• Not available

Models References:

• Not available

Methods Used:

• The authors examined the impact of air pollution on infant health in California over the 1990s. The authors — 1) developed a flexible, discrete-time, hazard model to estimate probability of infant death due to air pollution; 2) used case-control sampling to reduce the number of observations; and 3) developed models to estimate the probability of fetal death and low birth weight to investigate the effects of prenatal exposure.

Sources Used:

• Air pollution data from California Environmental Protection Agency’s air monitoring stations; weather data from National Climatic Data Center TD3200; infant death data from California Birth Cohort files for 1989-2000; additional sources cited in publication

Economic Citation / Fundings

Citation:

• Currie J and Neidell M. Air pollution and infant health: what can we learn from California's recent experience?. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 2005. 120; 3.
• Pubmed
• DOI

NIEHS Funding:

• Not available

Other Funding:

• Princeton's Center for Health and Well-Being; University of Chicago's Center for Integrating Statistical and Environmental Science