Air Pollution Exposure and Covid-19Matthew Cole, Ceren Ozgen and Eric Strobl () Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Birmingham Abstract: In light of the existing preliminary evidence of a link between Covid-19 and poor air quality, which is largely based upon correlations, we estimate the relationship between long term air pollution exposure and Covid-19 in 355 municipalities in the Netherlands. Using detailed secondary and administrative data we find compelling evidence of a positive relationship between air pollution, and particularly PM2:5 concentrations, and Covid-19 cases, hospital admissions and deaths. This relationship persists after controlling for a wide range of explanatory variables. Our results indicate that a 1 ug/m3 increase in PM2:5 concentrations is associated with 9.4 more Covid-19 cases, 3.0 more hospital admissions, and 2.3 more deaths. The relationship between Covid-19 and air pollution withstands a number of sensitivity and robustness exercises including instrumenting pollution to mitigate potential endogeneity and modelling spatial spillovers using spatial econometric techniques. Keywords: Covid-19; air pollution; Netherlands; spatial spillovers (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bir:birmec:20-13 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Discussion Papers from Department of Economics, University of Birmingham Contact information at EDIRC. |
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