Air pollution and child health in Urban India

Abstract

A potential source of confounding in studies investigating the effect of indoor air pollution on child health is exposure to ambient air pollution. We investigate this relationship pairing city-level air pollution measures with child level data from the National Family Health Survey (2005-06) for six cities in India. We address simultaneity in child health outcomes and potential endogeneity of city-level air pollution by using a bivariate probit regression framework with city fixed effects. Our findings show –1) an increase in ambient air pollution significantly increases child morbidity; 2) the type of cooking fuel used at home (usual measure of indoor pollution) is not a significant determinant of child morbidity once ambient air pollution and other child, household, and city-level covariates are controlled for; and 3) it is important to explicitly account for the correlation in various child health outcomes by modeling them jointly. Our findings suggest that targeted city-wide reductions in ambient air pollution could play an important role in improving child health.