Air pollution and respiratory ailments among children in urban India: exploring causality

Abstract

Using a multicity sample from India, we exploit city and fortnightly variation in air pollution to identify its causal effect on the incidence of a common respiratory ailment among children—cough. We account for key sources of confounding in this relationship with a two-way fixed effects estimation strategy. Our results show that air pollution, specifically, particulate matter, has a large and negative health effect that is robust to alternative specifications. These effects are three times larger for children living in slums in comparison to children living outside slums. This suggests that improving urban air quality can lead to equity-enhancing health gains in developing countries. In addition, our falsification tests are able to rule out the possibility that the identified effects are due to other diseases unrelated to air pollution.