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Air pollution effects on adult mortality rate in developing countries

Authors:
Nor Asma at University of Malaysia, Kelantan
Nor Asma
Normaz WANA Ismail at Universiti Putra Malaysia
Normaz WANA Ismail
Shaufique Sidique at Universiti Putra Malaysia
Shaufique Sidique
Nur Syazwani Mazlan at Universiti Putra Malaysia
Nur Syazwani Mazlan
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Abstract

Although industrialisation is a crucial aspect of economic growth across developing nations, through the release of air contaminants, industrial activities may also create adverse environmental health consequences. Noting that continuous production and other economic activities are crucial for continued survival, this study explores this issue by including the role of governance that is deemed essential but the literature is relatively sparse particularly in the context of developing countries. This research empirically analyses the relationship between air pollution and adult mortality rates from 72 developing countries from the period of 2010 until 2017. Particulate matter (PM2.5) and carbon dioxide (CO2) are used as indicators of air pollution. From the generalized method of moments (GMM) estimations, the results reveal that air pollution negatively affects adult mortality rate. The result reveals that a 10% increase in the PM2.5 level induces the adult mortality rates to increase between 0.04% and 0.06%. In addition, the government significantly moderates the negative effect of air pollution on adult mortality, whereby a one-unit enhancement in governance quality index reduces mortality among the adults in the developing countries by 0.01%. On the other hand, CO2 emission also appears to be positive, but not statistically significant. The results suggest that governance and public health interplay in the sense of a transition towards economic development for improved living and health states can be achievable with improved governance quality.
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Air pollution effects on adult mortality rate in developing countries
Nor Asma Ahmad
1
&Normaz Wana Ismail
2,3
&Shaufique Fahmi Ahmad Sidique
4
&Nur Syazwani Mazlan
2
Received: 5 May 2020 /Accepted: 7 October 2020
#Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
Although industrialisation is a crucial aspect of economic growth across developing nations, through the release of air contam-
inants, industrial activities may also create adverse environmental health consequences. Noting that continuous production and
other economic activities are crucial for continued survival, this study explores this issue by including the role of governance that
is deemed essential but the literature is relatively sparse particularly in the context of developing countries. This research
empirically analyses the relationship between air pollution and adult mortality rates from 72 developing countries from the
period of 2010 until 2017. Particulate matter (PM
2.5
) and carbon dioxide (CO
2
) are used as indicators of air pollution. From the
generalized method of moments (GMM) estimations, the results reveal that air pollution negatively affects adult mortality rate.
The result reveals that a 10% increase in the PM
2.5
level induces the adult mortality rates to increase between 0.04% and 0.06%.
In addition, the government significantly moderates the negative effect of air pollution on adult mortality, whereby a one-unit
enhancement in governance quality index reduces mortality among the adults in the developing countries by 0.01%. On the other
hand, CO
2
emission also appears to be positive, but not statistically significant. The results suggest that governance and public
health interplay in the sense of a transition towards economic development for improved living and health states can be
achievable with improved governance quality.
Keywords Air pollution .Particulate matters .CO2 .Adult mortality .Governance quality .GMM
Introduction
Pollution is among the many environmental challenges the
world is facing today. It is a major concern in much of the
developing countries as the impact of pollution is more se-
vere with levels that often cause poor health, deaths, and
disabilities for many people, which consequently leads to
higher mortality rates. Air pollution was linked with 1 out
of every 8 deaths or around 7 million people globally (Rees
2016). According to Pena and Rollins (2017), the effect from
disclosure about environmental air pollution is much greater
in developing regions, where population growth and rapid
industrialisation have resulted in low air quality. The emis-
sions from substantial industrial activities and high vehicle
emissions sustained from heavy pollutants greatly contribute
to air pollution and are a significant cause to global climate
change. According to Marchwinska-Wyrwal et al. (2011),
about half the pressure on human health from air pollution
is endured by people in developing countries. This unfortu-
nate association can be particularly relevant in developing
countries, as raised by Di et al. (2017) and Deguen et al.
(2015), where people with a low socioeconomic status are
more vulnerable to elevated rates of pollutants, and hence,
Responsible editor: Lotfi Aleya
*Normaz Wana Ismail
nwi@upm.edu.my
Nor Asma Ahmad
asma.a@umk.edu.my
Shaufique Fahmi Ahmad Sidique
shaufique@upm.edu.my
Nur Syazwani Mazlan
nur.syazwani@upm.edu.my
1
Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Business, Universiti Malaysia
Kelantan,KotaBharu,Malaysia
2
School of Business and Economics, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Seri
Kembangan, Malaysia
3
School of Business and Economics (Formerly known as Faculty of
Economics and Management), Universiti Putra Malaysia,
43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia
4
Institute of Agricultural and Food Policy Studies, Universiti Putra
Malaysia, Seri Kembangan, Malaysia
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11191-3
/ Published online: 17 October 2020
Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2021) 28:8709–8721
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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Full-text available
  • Mar 2020
Introduction: Although health expenditure in sub-Saharan African countries is the lowest compared with other regions in the world, most African countries have improved their budget allocations to health care over the past 15 years. The majority of health care sources in sub-Saharan Africa are private and largely involve out-of-pocket expenditure, which may prevent healthcare access. Access to healthcare is a known predictor of infant mortality. Therefore the objective of this study is to determine the impact of health care expenditure on infant mortality in sub-Saharan Africa. Methods: The study used panel data from World Bank Development Indictors (WDI) from 2000 to 2015 covering 46 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. The random effects model was selected over the fixed effects model based on the Hausman test to assess the effect of health care expenditure on infant and neonatal mortality. Results: Both public and external health care spending showed a significant negative association with infant and neonatal mortality. However, private health expenditure was not significantly associated with either infant or neonatal mortality. In this study, private expenditure includes funds from households, corporations and non-profit organizations. Public expenditure include domestic revenue as internal transfers and grants, transfers, subsidies to voluntary health insurance beneficiaries, non-profit institutions serving households or enterprise financing schemes as well as compulsory prepayment and social health insurance contributions. External health expenditure is composed of direct foreign transfers and foreign transfers distributed by government encompassing all financial inflows into the national health system from outside the country. Conclusion: Health care expenditure remains a crucial component of reducing infant and neonatal mortality in sub-Saharan African countries. In the region, where health infrastructure is largely underdeveloped, increasing health expenditure will contribute to progress towards reducing infant and neonatal mortality during the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) era. Therefore, governments in the region need to increase amounts allocated to health care service delivery in order to reduce infant mortality.
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The impact of PM2.5 on mortality in older adults: evidence from retirement of coal-fired power plants in the United States
Article
Full-text available
  • Mar 2020
  • ENVIRON HEALTH-GLOB
Background: Evidence of causal relationship between mortality of older adults and low- concentration PM2.5 remains limited. Objectives: This study investigates the effects of low-concentration PM2.5 on the mortality of adults older than 65 using the closure of coal-fired power plants in the Eastern United States as a natural experiment. Methods: We investigated power plants in the Eastern United States (US) that had production changes through unit shutdown or plant retirement between 1999 and 2013. We included only non-clustered power plants without scrubbers and with capacities greater than 50 MW. We used instrumental variable (IV) and difference-in-differences (DID) approaches to estimate the causal impact of PM2.5 concentrations on mortality among Medicare beneficiaries. We compared changes in monthly age-adjusted mortality before and after the retirement of coal-fired plants between the treated and control counties; we accounted for annual wind direction in our selection of treated and control counties. In the models, we initially included only county and monthly fixed effects, and then adjusted for covariates including: 1) only weather variables (temperature, dew point, pressure); and 2) weather variables and socio-economic variables (median household income and poverty rate). Results: The monthly age-adjusted mortality rate averaged across all plants was approximately 423 per 100,000 (SD = 69) and was higher for males than females. Mean PM2.5 concentrations across all counties were 12 μg/m3 (SD = 3.78). Using the IV method, we found that reductions in PM2.5 concentrations significantly decreased monthly mortality among older adults. IV results show that a 1-μg/m3 reduction in PM2.5 concentrations leads to 7.17 fewer deaths per 100,000 per month, or a 1.7% lower monthly mortality rate among people older than 65 years. Using the DID approach, we found that power plant retirement significantly decreased: 1) monthly PM2.5 levels by 2.1 μg/m3, and 2) monthly age-adjusted mortality by approximately 15 people per 100,000 (or 3.6%) in treated counties relative to control counties. The mortality effects were higher among males than females and its impact was the greatest among people older than 75 years. Conclusion: These findings provide evidence of the effectiveness of local, plant-level control measures in reducing near-plant PM2.5 and mortality among U.S. Medicare beneficiaries.
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